04 Click Mechanism for Insect Flight 

Thank you. Glad you liked it.

You are most welcome. I think this is a difficult process to explain by text and understand from reading. I am happy that the video makes it clearer. LK

sonic Happy to help

The mechanism is more primitive, not their flight. As you pointed out it's more difficult for a dragonfly to control their flight and because their flight apparatus is more flexible it can even do maneuvers as gliding etc. . But I doubt it has the efficiency and effectiveness to lift the weight of a bumblebee. The bumblebee also does not hunt and therefore does not need raw direct flight control. Modern day analogy: every idiot can fly a dji drone with the highly advanced flight-software taking care of everything, but in drone racing the advanced pilots prefer raw direct control; only difference is, advanced insect flight trades the flexibility for greatly higher efficiency and not only reducing complexity in the flight control (brain power).

@@haifutter4166 well yes, but in your analogy the simple to control drones are do actually have more complex, harder to design and make, technology. While the thorax type flight is not just simpler to control but also less complex. Like if we're talking about skill, then something than advanced means further "advanced" in the process of learning the skill. aka, being able to do things that require more skill/brain power. In case of drones, then the race drones are for "advanced players" If we're talking about technology/ mechanisms. Then primitive means less complex or easier to come up with. Aka: a flint and stone is more primitive than a sigaret lighter. I can see how sometimes technology wise, newer inventions can be more simple, because we didn't realize how easy things could have been, but they are rare, so rare that i can't even think of an example from the top of my head. well sometimes, an end product is simpler, but then the manufacturing process is a lot more advanced. for example, a fiberglass rowboat is a simpler object than a wooden one with planks. But it requires fiberglass mats, chemical epoxies who themselves require advanced machines to be made. Anyway, in both brain power/skill and complexity wise, the dragonfly flight method is more advanced. Maybe the way you can say it's reversed is that dragonflies are amongst the oldest insects, and flies and the like are later evolution. But i'm not sure there were no thorax type flight insects around. I guess some more genus science information is needed to say something more conclusive on this.

@@haifutter4166 ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-7QMcXEj7IT0.html apparently according to this video, the evolution of insect flight is still kind of a mystery to us. So I think it's hard to say which one of the methods was the earlier and then more primitive "invention" To me, intuitively, the thorax seems more primitive, because you could imagine them being attached to the thorax first, for either gills or drifting (depending on the theory) and then later the dragonflies developed extra muscles. Since no other insect seems to be a descended of of the dragonfly (as it has basically been evolved to stable perfection hundreds of millions of years ago) On the other side, that delitzschala bitterfeldensis looks a lot more like a dragonfly than any other flying insect. The evolutionary split must have been very early on as dragon/damselflies anatomy is so different from all other insects living to day. Or flight could have evolved twice independently in different ways. Since it's such a beneficial thing to insects. Then maybe calling one advanced and the other primitive isn't even relevant. Found this interesting pdf with lots of fossils and reconstructions www.fakultaeten.tu-clausthal.de/fileadmin/fakultaet2/Aktuelles/Vortrag_Brauckmann_2009.pdf

@@DrTheRich Sounds good. Since the two different mechanisms have to meet totally different requirements, its nonsense to call one advanced: indirect/direct is a better categorization. PS: Do you know of any implementation of the click mechanism in robotic flight? I only know of bistable swimming soft-robots.