Some of this is not breaking news, but some is. When I was watching someone in another classroom in futile pursuit of said dastardly, dirty diptera, I realised that there is a lot of interesting science behind successful swatting.
Flies are hard to swat for a number of reasons. They avoid predation by both sensory detection and behavioral responses. With its large eyes, a fly can see nearly 360°, including behind itself. This means that it’s nearly impossible to “sneak up” on a fly. Because an insect’s flicker fusion frequency is 250 Hertz or more (compared to the human 50), they are vastly more sensitive to motion. Flies can see a flyswatter coming at them, no matter how slow or fast you move it. As anyone who has ever examined their prey has noted, flies are also hairy. These “hairs” (setae) make them sensitive to changes in ambient air speed and direction — they can feel the acceleration of the air from the pressure wave created by the flyswatter.
Michael Dickinson and others at the California Institute of Technology have recently teased out other details to the flys’ success. They used high-speed imaging to discover that Read the rest of this entry »
