Image of the Day: Swish Swish

Animals’ tails swat away insects using both wind and whack.

kerry grens
| 1 min read

MARGUERITE MATHERNE

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The tails of elephants, giraffes, and some other mammals swing like a pendulum with a second, shorter pendulum attached to the bottom, according to a study of their swishing motion published yesterday (October 15) in the Journal of Experimental Biology. Video analysis, modeling, and simulations show that the animals’ tails generate winds sufficient to shoo away mosquitoes and can move at speeds fast enough to hit the insects.

“Most people assume that horses and other mammals swing their tails as some kind of deterrent for bugs; we wanted to provide scientific evidence for this claim,” Marguerite Matherne, a grad student in David Hu’s lab Georgia Tech and lead author of the study, says in a press release.

M.E. Matherne et al., “Mammals repel mosquitoes with their tails,” J Exp Biol, 221:jeb178905, 2018.

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Meet the Author

  • kerry grens

    Kerry Grens

    Kerry served as The Scientist’s news director until 2021. Before joining The Scientist in 2013, she was a stringer for Reuters Health, the senior health and science reporter at WHYY in Philadelphia, and the health and science reporter at New Hampshire Public Radio. Kerry got her start in journalism as a AAAS Mass Media fellow at KUNC in Colorado. She has a master’s in biological sciences from Stanford University and a biology degree from Loyola University Chicago.

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