Mondo Knows Facts
Some tiny midges beat their wings over 60,000 times a minute
Smaller insects beat faster because their wings have less mass to move
Certain biting midges flap at rates above 60,000 beats per minute, roughly a thousand times a second, which produces the high whine people hear near water. Muscle cannot contract that fast, so the wings are driven by elastic deformation of the thorax instead. Wingbeat frequency falls steadily as insect size increases.
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Tags: insects, flight, midges
Some tiny midges beat their wings over 60,000 times a minute: the short answers
- Where does this come from, and can I check it?
- Smaller insects beat faster because their wings have less mass to move. The figure is taken from Encyclopaedia Britannica, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
- Is this really a records & extremes fact?
- Yes. It sits on the Records & Extremes shelf, one of 1,090 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
- What else can I read about it?
- The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.