Look Up! The Billion-Bug Highway You Can't See

Look up at the sky and what do you see? Well, blue, yes. And maybe a plane or a bird, but otherwise ... nothing. Or so you think. It turns out that right above you, totally invisible, is an enormous herd of animal life -- tiny bugs riding the wind currents.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• May Berenbaum
• insects
• spider
• ladybug
• butterfly
• termite
• aphids
• Robert Krulwich
• Maggie Starbard
• Ellen Webber
• Benjamin Arthur
• NPR
• National Public Radio
• sky
• bug highway
• animation
• science
• Krulwich wonders
• educational

[usaswim323]

What an adventurous termite.

[frickfrock999]

Flying spiders?

We're screwed.

[SeanneryConnery]

@monkeyfuzz1234 yeah....meters...seeing how it was british scientists eh? not a hard one to figure out w/o doing any math really

[spurcross]

Love the end music starting @ 2:58. Does anyone know who does it?

Loved the entire video, as well.

[QPopz]

How'd they know that there are bugs there? I can't imagine them flying around with a net at 19,000 ft.

[Phaze252]

I do believe this would be problematic if we were to ever create a flying car highway.

[gamesbok]

.6 of a mile is idiot code for 1Km.

[fitz6351]

the number they found, THREE.....just three actually....shit

[MrMilkman29]

I wonder how many bug splaters a plane has in its windows after every flight

[monkeyfuzz1234]

They say ".6 mile column of air" and then they draw a square and writes ".6 miles radius". The term radius is only applied to circular objectes. The square drawing is probably a miss interpritation from the "graphic department".

.6 miles = 965.6064 meters. Both numbers seams strange for arbitrary numbers. My guess is that it is based on a 1000 meters radius, which is a much more even arbitrary number to work with. 0.62137 miles (1km) was rounded to 0.6 miles

Based on this; 88.7 bugs/sq ft

[PeppoMusic]

@KyleDixon88

Oh whoops! Thanks for the correction, darn that makes quite the different number.

[KyleDixon88]

@PeppoMusic

They distance given was 0.6 square miles, not 6 miles...