Not only people but also animals seek to hide from the summer rain as soon as possible. Birds and insects do not fly in rainy weather. However, if you leave the window open in the rain, mosquitoes will certainly fly into the room.
Mosquitoes are relatively small and rather fragile-looking insects. However, they show amazing vitality, and continue to bite us in spite of many protective and deterrent means. But the most striking feature of this insect is its ability to fly in the rain.
For a mosquito, a direct hit of a raindrop means about the same as a three-ton truck falling on a person, that is, instant death. A common raindrop weighs about 50 times more than a mosquito, and if it hits an insect sitting on a horizontal surface, it kills it. And, nevertheless, mosquitoes manage to move quite successfully in the rain.
Recently, in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, there was an article in which the dynamics of the collision of a raindrop and a flying mosquito is considered from a physics point of view. To understand the basic principles of insect-droplet interaction, the scientists used a high-speed camera. The experiment was carried out in a special installation where a sprayer with a pump was used to simulate rain.
The average size of a mosquito body is 2-3 mm in width and height and about 7 mm in length with a weight of 2 milligrams. A drop of water weighs 100 milligrams, and its diameter is 2-3 mm. Considering the average frequency of falling raindrops and their speed of about 9 meters per second, we can conclude that the collision of an insect and a drop will occur once every 20 seconds.
Scientists were able to determine that when a drop hits the legs, the insect rolls sideways. If it hits the body, the mosquito moves down with the drop for some time by about 60 mm, and then leaves it. Thus, the insect can fly perfectly safely in the rain. However, heavy rainfall poses a mortal threat to the mosquito, since frequent jets can nail it to the ground.
