Anti-Gravity Properties of Beetle Wings?

At art fairs, people often ask me biology questions. Some even follow up later. Here is an interesting, confusing (confused?) one: 'Anyway, meeting you, a real life beetle entomologist, reminded me of the fascinating (real or imagined?) work of Russian scientist/inventor Viktor Grebennikov.  He wrote about investigating apparent anti-gravity properties of beetle wings and wing covers, and even applying them and their surface geometries to make several generations of a flying device.  Maybe it’s real, maybe it’s fantasy. Maybe he successfully passed this technology on to the Russian scientific establishment, and maybe it is the basis of alleged UFO sightings, or the advanced hypersonic weapons or the nuclear powered cruise missiles announced by Putin that can linger in the air indefinitely.  I don’t know.   But it might be interesting to try replicating some of his early experiments using beetle wings from your collection.  

As I told you, I’ve felt a weird sensation in my hand when Tucson june bugs took off, and it didn’t really feel like wing vibrations.  And my collaborator has told me about several strange observations that he has made, in tiny bugs and a spider, that seem to point towards some kind of non-gravitic force.  He has found entomologist reports of similar strange insect behaviors that they could not convincingly explain with known physics.'

I am not sure what anti-gravity means, and I have not read Grebennikov's papers. But: Close to a big mass like earth everything is exposed to its gravity. Flying or in water floating becomes possible in our atmosphere if the pressure of the air or water column under any object is considerably larger than that above it. The profile of wings moving through air can produce turbulence and pressure differences over its surfaces that produce updrift - check out diagrams of bird or airplane wings. Beetles use only their membraneous hind-wings for flight, the hard-shell front-wings are in my opinion just a protective cover (see the pre-flight image of a Lined June Bug above). I am sure that  the membranous beetle hind-wings function in a very similar way to other wings, with the heavy vein-structures in front probably producing the necessary turbulence. So I expect no miraculous change of basic laws of physics here. The heavy front-wings (elytra) seem to be mainly a protective shield for the delicate hind wings and other organs when the beetle is not flying, and beetles spend really a lot of time grounded when you compare them to many other insects. I have seen suggestions that those wings are used to facilitate flying when they are open. Maybe like a gliding apparatus? But seeing that most beetles are pretty bad fliers compared to their relatives like hymenopterans, dipterans and the 'primitive' odonata, I doubt that the stiff, heavy elytra are helping them fly. Several beetle families that fly well have greatly reduced elytra - Staphylinids and  Ripiphoridae  for example. The next photo is of Ripiphorus rex, a very bee-like beetle that appeared in another blog (https://arizonabeetlesbugsbirdsandmore.blogspot.com/2011/04/wasp-bee-fly-its-ripiphorus-vierecki.html)

Others like buprestids and some Chafers do not lift their front-wings but only push their hind-wings through lateral slits when they want to fly. Thus their body seem to keep a more airodynamic shape. They fly fast and maneuver well, land without those clumpsy crashes of their close relatives, and in addition often resemble very good fliers among Hymenopterans like wasps or bumblebees, probably a mimicry for predator avoidance. next photo: Euphoria monticola, a Flower Chafer, flying with closed front-wings

As for mysterious vibrations that you feel before a big beetle lifts off: Insects are heterotherm, not maintaining a constantly elevated bodytemperature as mammals and birds do. But their flightmusculature only functions within certain, optimal temperature range. Some big moths (Sphinx Moths), big Hymenoptera (bumblebees), and big beetles can 'shiver' to produce extra heat and also increase the pumping motion that ventilates their tracheal system. They do that as flight preparation. So no - I do not believe that beetle wings are 'anti gravity devices' Sorry to be so tied to conventional physics, living under constant gravity does that to a mind!