Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/12/01/how-flies-are-able-to-elude-your-fly-swatter.html
…
5 Likes
Duh!
6 Likes
Pulling off wing parts of a fly for science? Check.
5 Likes
Flight stability through halteres is really cool.
That flies’ brains processing info 10x faster than humans’ sentence is bs. Their photoreceptors are a lot faster than ours (we’ve traded temporal acuity for better spatial acuity), but the neurons aren’t any faster.
4 Likes
But they’re a LOT closer. If you can’t improve speed, then reduce distance.
3 Likes
Today, like most days, I’m sticking microelectrodes inside insect visual neurons. I’m very aware of how small and close together they are. A colleague has somewhat serious plans to try to breed giant fruitflies to make it easier
In both flies and people though, the transmission time of signals going along a neuron to its downstream targets is only a small part of the processing time. The fastest visuomotor processing in people takes ~150 ms. The extra time to send signals around our big brain only takes up ~20 ms of that, which is less time than it takes for our photoreceptors to encode the changes in light. For flies the fastest visuomotor processing takes ~50 ms with ~5 ms of that being transmission time (their faster photoreceptors and fewer levels of processing are the main increases in speed). The signals have to go ~100x further in us but they’re also transmitted much faster
7 Likes
It’s because you don’t follow through properly.
Don’t try to hit the fly, try to hit the surface the fly is sitting on.
2 Likes
Fascinating and kind of cruel at the same time. As for eluding the swatter… It’s the resistance typical fly swatters create through the air. I use a wire wok spider strainer and swat them out of the with ease. No really, with ease.
2 Likes
Jobs: Wanted: Haltere Remover
2 Likes
That’s good work if you can get it! What a good idea it would be for me not to immediately naysay someone who feels confident talking about neuron speeds. Oh, well.
2 Likes
Cleaner than a fly swatter, I use a twice folded (not in half, into quarters) paper towel or napkin to squash and swipe up flies. You just “pooch” the middle of the paper to make a finger hold and then slowly approach the fly. You can get so close, about an inch away, that there’s no chance the fly can escape when you make your coup de grace.
This method occurred to me, because it struck me that it’s unlikely a fly will consider a whole eye-field of white a moving threat: Nothing moving in that landscape!
1 Like
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
