Who hasn't wanted to be a fly on a wall during a closed-door meeting or even a certain infamous tryst? Now a breakthrough in the understanding of insect flight and fortuitous funding by the U.S. Department of Defense have inched a colorful adage closer to reality.

Not long ago insect flight seemed to defy the conventional laws of aerodynamics. In a typical aircraft the wing's camber (or shape) and its angle of attack create an area of low pressure over the top of the wing--otherwise known as lift. Conventionally speaking, insects can't generate enough lift to stay in the air. And yet they do. In 1994 Charles Ellington, a zoologist at the University of Cambridge, and his colleagues built a large, slow-motion insect model for wind-tunnel tests. Confirming the group's theory, the experiment revealed a microscale vortex sticking to the wing's leading edge during the downstroke. The swirling produced low pressure over the wings, generating copious volumes of lift.

   
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