Why Hard to Hit a Fly

How many times have you managed to swat a fly by hand? Difficult is not it? The secret behind this ability has now been known explanation. 

 
For 20 years researching biomechanics wing flies, Michael Dickinson of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) recently solved it today. That was because he was always curious about the simple question and often asked people she met.

"Now I have the answer," said Dickinson, who conducted the study with Esther M. and Abe M. Zarem. He discovered the secret maneuver after record number of blow flies that threatened using a digital camera that can record speed and high resolution. They found that flies can identify threats based on location. His brain will calculate how far the threats against him before deciding to flapping wings and fled.






After predicting the direction of the threat, foot rests to fly in the opposite direction. All the preparation can be done to get away very quickly, just 100 milliseconds after it detects a hazard.
"This shows how quickly the fly brain to process sensory information into an appropriate response to the movement," said Dickinson. In fact, flies regulate posture as a big threat.






That is, the fly has integrated well between visual information from eyes and metasensorik information on his feet. These findings provide clues about the nervous system of flies and shows that the brain contained the threat position mapping system.

"This is a transformation of stimuli into motion a complex and little subsequent research to find parts of the brain that govern it," he said.

Of these systems, Dickinson also can recommend the most effective way swat a fly. According to him, hitting the best time flies when her position was not ready to fly, so the time he needs to anticipate these threats are relatively much longer. Of course not easy to perform accurate movements of less than 100 milliseconds.