Aerodynamically the bumblebee shouldn't be able to fly.
Okay, correction: aerodynamically bumblebees were not supposed to be able to fly back in the past, at least when the biologists capitalised on the fact that the bumblebees’ wings were simply too short to produce a lift force enough to keep their already miniscule bodies in the air to deride the physicists and proclaim the beauty of biology. Of course after decades of being mocked and ridiculed by their bitter rivals, the physicists bit back like some dogs gone rabid and found out that the bumblebees do not actually fly like planes; they hover like helicopters. Their wings vibrate so fast that they generate tiny air vortices to keep themselves in air, on air, mid air or whatever the correct way to express this is.
Okay, to hell with the story and the Physics, the main focus of this little post about little beings is about the fascination generated by the biologists’ claims. Well, before the physicists managed to find a convincing explanation, the bumblebee became the miracle bee that defied the laws of gravity; the same bee that slapped Sir Isaac Newton across his face; the same bee that stung him and caused all the mounds and craters on his face; the same bee that made him appear to have amazingly ugly hair in our textbooks; the same bee that brought us this nice little quote.
Aerodynamically the bumblebee shouldn't be able to fly, but the bumblebee doesn't know that so it goes on flying anyway.
Well, at least it was true for a few decades. The bumblebees did it, so can we.
