Thrips

Thrips, commonly known as thunderflies or thunderbugs, are minute, slender insects with fringed wings and unique asymmetrical mouthparts. Entomologists have described approximately 7,700 species; they are distributed globally with their food plants. They fly only weakly and their feathery wings are unsuitable for conventional flight; instead, thrips exploit an unusual mechanism, clap and fling, to create lift using an unsteady circulation pattern with transient vortices near the wings.

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Source: Wikipedia · Image: Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 3.0

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Every species, image, fact, and figure is drawn from Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons, used under public-domain and Creative Commons licenses. No content is AI-generated.