– how are flies so darn fast to react?!

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Just spent too many (unsuccessful) minutes hunting a fly in my kitchen. I tried to encourage it out the door but it clearly wants to stay.

It’s goading me and it’s bloody massive. Like bumblebee size.

I went at it with a magazine, kitchen roll and dishcloths but all were fruitless.

I read they perceive time differently so is it that they see me in slow motion? How does something operate in the world around them at a different ‘base speed’ if that is the case?

EDIT/UPDATE: thanks for all the comments. Some very cool and interesting things said that I’m going to follow up on. Not sure if it was the same one but a little while ago approached another behemoth of a fly with a white kitchen roll super slow and successful smushed it. Almost felt bad. Almost.

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26 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Fly has a small nervous system specifically tailored to quickly take off and, well, fly, whenever something large moves towards it.

You have a large nervous system, on the other hand. Even before you consider any sort of adaptation, signal transmission in neurons is not instantaneous. That’s why, no matter how hard you train, your reaction speed will be capped at tens of miliseconds it takes for signal propagation.

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