Are Bugs Hurt in Falls From High-Rises? Q. I bring home fresh produce from a garden that invariably has little critters embedded, sow bugs and the like. I put them outside on my 19th-floor window ledge, and they crawl or fall away. Do they get hurt? A. Probably not, in the opinion of Ward Wheeler, head of the division of invertebrate zoology at the American Museum of Natural History. "Sow bugs are crustaceans, like shrimp, not insects," Dr. Wheeler said. They have the advantage of reaching their top speed very quickly because of their small size, he said, "so they are likely fine." He cited a famous 1928 essay, "On Being the Right Size," by the biologist J. B. S. Haldane: The resistance presented to movement by the air is proportional to the surface of the moving object. Divide an animal's length, breadth and height each by 10; its weight is reduced to a thousandth, but its surface only to a hundredth. So the resistance to falling in the case of the small animal is relatively 10 times greater than the driving force. Or as Haldane put it, more graphically: "You can drop a mouse down a thousand-yard mine shaft; and, on arriving at the bottom, it gets a slight shock and walks away, provided that the ground is fairly soft. A rat is killed, a man is broken, a horse splashes. Questions of general interest will be answered, but requests for medical advice cannot be honored and unpublished letters cannot be answered individually.