Roll-Stabilization During Flight of the Blowfly’s Head and Body by Mechanical and Visual Cues

Abstract

Flying animals have six degrees of freedom of movement in space: three of translation along their body axes (lift, slip, thrust), and three of rotation about these axes (yaw, pitch, roll). For aerodynamical reasons, however, they maintain on average a characteristic flight attitude, i.e. a particular orientation of their body with respect to the gravity field. Translatory and yaw movements have little influence upon flight stability, but pitch and roll movements involve the risk of crashing. Consequently such movements must be rigidly controlled, especially in highly manoeuvrable animals like flies.