Catching flies--art or science?

Times:

It is a frustrating experience familiar to us all: an irritating, buzzing housefly that easily avoids our best attempts to swat it.

The perfect swatting strategy, however, has now been revealed by scientists who have identified why the insects are so good at evading rolled-up newspapers - and how they might be outwitted.

The right approach is to aim not at the insects themselves because they are extraordinarily good at anticipating where exactly your blow will land. “It is best to aim a bit forward of the fly's starting position, to anticipate where it is going to jump when it first sees your swatter,” said Michael Dickinson, of the California Institute of Technology, who led the study.

In the research, published in the journal Current Biology, Dr Dickinson's team used high-resolution, high-speed imaging technology to examine how flies move to avoid impending threats. Instead of just taking off when they see an object hurtling towards them, the insects carefully plan an escape in milliseconds. A fraction of a second before a fly springs into the air, it will alter its body position so that it is properly prepared to jump in the right direction.

If the blow looks as if it is coming from behind, the fly will move its middle legs forward a little and lean back, so it is ideally positioned to jump forwards into the air and away from the threat. For a threat from the front, it will move its legs backward and leap that way. For sideways threats, it will keep its legs still and lean to the other side to get ready for a lateral escape.

The entire process of calculating the direction of the threat and preparing the body takes just one tenth of a second, and it will have flown away within two tenths of a second.

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There is more.

When I was in high school I read a book by a general who was captured in the Korean War and held in isolation under some pretty terrible conditions. General Dean began amusing himself by catching flies. One of his first discoveries is that they were much easier to catch if they were already in flight. He got so good at catching them with his bare hand that he decided to start doing it with his thumb and forefinger to make it more of a challenge. He became quite accomplished at doing so before he was finally freed at the end of the war.

It is too bad these scientist did not have the benefit of his research on the subject.