– 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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Anonymous 0 Comments

I wrote a poem once about how flies see the world in slow motion. It’s not just fanciful whimsy – there are scientific studies on it.

We can only process so many images per second. So, if you move your hand super fast, it blurs or you can’t see it move at all. Smaller animals with fast metabolisms can process images faster. Like having more frames per second on a video. This makes time “feel” slower to them. Or makes their reactions seem faster to us.

Obviously, I don’t think they can say how a fly feels with any objectivity.

Google : “fly’s perception of time” or similar for an article or two about it. There’s lots.

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