UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON, FLORIAN MUIJRES Fruit flies respond to threats with subtle, lightning-fast, evasive maneuvers that were caught on high-speed cameras by a group of researchers at the University of Washington. The finding, reported in Science last week (April 11), helps explain why it’s so difficult to swat a fly.
The researchers filmed flying fruit flies using three high-speed cameras that capture 7,500 frames per second. They showed the flies a dark shadow that increased in size, simulating an approaching predator. They recorded the flies using a swift rolling, banking movement and increasing their wing speed to zip away from the looming menace.
“These flies do a precise and fast calculation to avoid a specific threat and they are doing it using a brain that is as small as a grain of salt,” coauthor Michael Dickinson told BBC News. The tactic is like the maneuver is similar to the way a helicopter turns or a plane when it banks.
“What’s remarkable is the rapidity of the response, and the subtlety of the changes the flies ...
