These are planthoppers, and they’re about to launch.
The thing about watching them all go at the same time is you get a
sense of how chaotic it is when you combine a spring-loaded jump with wing powered flight.
It’s an unpredictable path into the air, but a perfect escape pattern for
an insect trying its best not to be caught.
I have 2 goals when I make insect flight videos like this. First:
I want film something new and capture insects in a way that I don’t think anybody has before.
And second, I want each of these videos visually different.
Usually, that’s meant experimenting with color in the filming set to compliment and highlight the
bodies of the insects. But, recently, someone sent me this book. ‘Borne on the Wind’ by
Stephen Dalton. It was published in 1975. And it’s interesting because it was the first collection of
detailed pictures of insects in unrestrained free flight. Some of my favorite are these,
the ones that combine multiple exposures isolated against a black background.
So, using this as visual inspiration, I set out to film another new set of insects.
This is a Chinese mantis is one of the largest insects I’ve filmed. The thing to watch here
are the hind wings as they unfold and expand like an accordion. The mantis is so huge,
it barely gets in one complete cycle of a down- and up-stroke before it leaves the camera frame.
These are American bird grasshoppers. They fly,
but of course, they’re more famous for their jumps.
My plan was to try to film their knees, this part called the semi-lunar process
which bends like a spring to store and release energy for their jump.
But, that was more challenging than I thought. But what I did capture this:
their spring-loaded donkey-kick! That defensive kick took only 17 milliseconds, reached a maximum
rotation of 19 degrees per millisecond, and a max velocity of just over 15 miles per hour.
Another insect with a spring-loaded jump is this broadheaded sharpshooter,
a type of leafhopper. I filmed leafhoppers before,
but none as attractive as this species. The top of their wings have an amazing mottled teal pattern,
but as they start their flights I was surprised to see the undersides of their wings flash red.
The same under-wing red color pattern is visible on this stink bugs when the wings start moving.
These things look like flying tanks to me. Their hind wings seamlessly link with the front to form
one big functional wing. Wing flapping lifts them off the ground and into a stereotypical pattern:
first head up and vertical and then a gradual rollover into a head-first forward flight.
This is the opposite of a bulky tank-like insect,
it’s an ichneumonid wasp. Everything about it long and gangly, kind of alien-like, if you ask me.
These are parasitoids, which means they inject their eggs into things like moth catepillers.
The young wasps young develop inside,
and ultimately emerge and leave the caterpillar a dried-up, depleted husk.
Last are brown lacewings. Like the planthoppers at the beginning of this video,
these insects jump into their flights and end up on a wild and chaotic flight path.
This is actually something you can see in that book in the pictures of green lacewings,
which are a different, but related, insect family.
Seeing these similarities in flight
behavior between related groups is one of the reasons I like making these.
Each insect has it’s unique thing, but you can also see a lot of common
ground between things that are close to each other on the evolutionary tree.
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