Can mosquitoes fly in the rain?

TL;DR

This study uses high-speed videography to analyze how mosquitoes and their mimics respond to raindrop impacts, revealing their surprising ability to recover flight after collisions despite high accelerations.

Contribution

It provides detailed fluid dynamics analysis of mosquito raindrop collisions and demonstrates their rapid recovery capability, a novel insight into insect flight resilience.

Findings

Mosquitoes can recover flight quickly after raindrop impacts.

Impacts cause accelerations of 30-300 g over 1 ms.

Mosquito responses are comparable to inert styrofoam mimics.

Abstract

Collisions with raindrops are one of many obstacles insects face during flight. In this fluid dynamics video, we present a series of high-speed films of impacts between mosquitoes and raindrops. We also present drop impacts upon insect mimics, which are unsupported styrofoam balls of the same mass as mosquitoes. High-speed videography and particle tracking during collision are employed to determine the insect position versus time. We determine the magnitude of acceleration by considering the momentum transfer and impact duration. Experiments with live mosquitoes indicate a surprising ability to quickly recover flight post-collision, despite accelerations of 30-300 gravities over durations of 1 ms.