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Subject: Re: Why it's so hard to swat a fly
From: WingedMessenger <Boy@FlyingHigh.com>
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Date: Sun, 07 Sep 2008 05:13:33 GMT
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"::darkshadows::" <blood@thirsty.net> wrote in
news:8v76c4pfpipec5e5rq00c1jfeujo4i9doe@4ax.com:
>
>
> 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)
>
You sure read some weird articles LOL.
Mercury.
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