ArticleScience advances2019
Flies land upside down on a ceiling using rapid visually mediated rotational maneuvers.
Article in Science advances, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers.
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Who cites it
16 citing papers in PubMed.
- Sticking the landing: leg mechanosensory feedback coordinates the transition from flight to landing.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Machine learning-based framework for wall-perching prediction of flying robot.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Aerobatic maneuvers in insect-scale flapping-wing aerial robots via deep-learned robust tube model predictive control.Science advances · 2025Article
- Bionic Modeling Study on the Landing Mechanism of Flapping Wing Robot Based on the Thoracic Legs of Purple Stem Beetle,Biomimetics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Kinematics and Flow Field Analysis ofBiomimetics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Bumblebees compensate for the adverse effects of sidewind during visually guided landings.The Journal of experimental biology · 2024Article
- Analysis of collision avoidance in honeybee flight.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2024Article
- An Aerial-Wall Robotic Insect That Can Land, Climb, and Take Off from Vertical Surfaces.Research (Washington, D.C.) · 2023Article
- Chasing Flies: The Use of Wingbeat Frequency as a Communication Cue in Calyptrate Flies (Diptera: Calyptratae).Insects · 2022Article
- Design, Characterization, and Liftoff of an Insect-Scale Soft Robotic Dragonfly Powered by Dielectric Elastomer Actuators.Micromachines · 2022Article
- Bumblebees land rapidly by intermittently accelerating and decelerating toward the surface during visually guided landings.iScience · 2022Article
- Bumblebees display characteristics of active vision during robust obstacle avoidance flight.The Journal of experimental biology · 2022Article
- How Was Nature Able to Discover Its Own Laws-Twice?Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Review
- Landing mosquitoes bounce when engaging a substrate.Scientific reports · 2020Article
- Accelerated landings in stingless bees are triggered by visual threshold cues.Biology letters · 2020Article
- Accelerated landing in a stingless bee and its unexpected benefits for traffic congestion.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Flies and other insects routinely land upside down on a ceiling. These inverted landing maneuvers are among the most remarkable aerobatic feats, yet the full range of these behaviors and their underlying sensorimotor processes remain largely unknown. Here, we report that successful inverted landing in flies involves a serial sequence of well-coordinated behavioral modules, consisting of an initial upward acceleration followed by rapid body rotation and leg extension, before terminating with a leg-assisted body swing pivoted around legs firmly attached to the ceiling. Statistical analyses suggest that rotational maneuvers are triggered when flies' relative retinal expansion velocity reaches a threshold. Also, flies exhibit highly variable pitch and roll rates, which are strongly correlated to and likely mediated by multiple sensory cues. When flying with higher forward or lower upward velocities, flies decrease the pitch rate but increase the degree of leg-assisted swing, thereby leveraging the transfer of body linear momentum.
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