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Subject: Why it's so hard to swat a fly
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Date: Sun, 07 Sep 2008 00:27:51 GMT
Xref: news.nzbot.com alt.fan.rolex:7255
Why it's so hard to swat a fly
Fri Aug 29, 12:50 PM ET
CHICAGO (Reuters) - The brains of flies are wired to avoid the
swatter, U.S. researchers said on Thursday. ADVERTISEMENT
At the mere hint of a threat, the insects adjust their preflight
stance to flee in the opposite direction, ensuring a clean getaway,
they said in a finding that helps explain why flies so easily evade
swipes from their human foes.
"These movements are made very rapidly, within about 200 milliseconds,
but within that time the animal determines where the threat is coming
from and activates an appropriate set of movements to position its
legs and wings," Michael Dickinson of the California Institute of
Technology said in a statement.
"This illustrates how rapidly the fly's brain can process sensory
information into an appropriate motor response," said Dickinson, whose
research appears in the journal Current Biology.
Dickinson's team studied this process in fruit flies using high-speed
digital imaging equipment and a fancy fly swatter.
In response to a threat from the front, the fly moves its middle legs
forward, leans back and raises its back legs for a backward takeoff.
If the threat is from the side, the fly leans the other way before
takeoff.
The findings offer new insight into the fly nervous system, and lends
a few clues on how to outsmart a fly.
"It is best not to swat at the fly's starting position," Dickinson
said. Instead, aim for the escape route.
Dickinson, a bioengineer, has devoted his life's work to the study of
insect flight. He has built a tiny robotic fly called Robofly and a
3-D visual flight simulator called Fly-O-Vision.
(Reporting by Julie Steenhuysen, editing by Will Dunham and Xavier
Briand)
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