Question: what is the most interesting thing you have found out/discovered

Tom Dally answered on 9 Mar 2020: last edited 9 Mar 2020 11:04 am

So, I’m really interested in the types of insects that pollinate plants, like bees, flies, and butterflies and moths. There are over 6000 species of insect in the UK that can pollinate flowers! And a really cool thing that I discovered was that you can use the sounds that these insects make when they fly to identify what they are. Most insects can fly, and when they do most of them make a buzzing sound (caused by their wings beating in the air). This buzzing sound is different in different groups of insect, sometimes higher and sometimes lower, and is usually related to their body size (bigger insects make lower buzzes). It’s not a very useful technique for identifying different species of insect, because there are *lots* of different species that are all the same size, but you can tell the difference between broad groups of insects, like bumblebees (large) and honeybees (medium), or flies (that have two wings) and wasps (that have four wings). I’d love to create an app that people could use to identify different insects in their gardens using the microphones in the mobile phones!