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Unlike a mozzie, swatting after a fly is often futile: they have a knack for sidestepping even the quickest of attempts.
While you wouldn’t be alone in thinking flies have some kind of superpower, you also wouldn’t be totally wrong.
The humble housefly has been blessed with supervision.
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In an article published on The Conversation, Cameron Webb, Clinical Lecturer and Principal Hospital Scientist, University of Sydney, and Bryan Lessard, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, CSIRO, said: “The secret to this impressive evasiveness isn’t some kind of mind-reading trick of the fly. It’s their superior vision.”
“Flies have up to 6,000 ommatidia, or mini lenses, in each eye and can see us approach in “slow motion”. They may not have the highest resolution vision, but they’ve got some of the “fastest” vision on earth – giving them the time to quickly react and escape,” they explain.
A fly will be able to detect the threat of your hand or swatter quicker than you can move.
“When a fly spots a predator, or person waving their arms about, it freezes, repositions itself, and commences a choreographed dance, perfectly co-ordinating its legs and wings to lift and buzz off in the opposite direction to the incoming threat,” the article says.
“Flies can do this so quickly that our eyes can’t even follow their pre-flight manoeuvring or predict the path of their elegant escape. A split-second to us could be lifesaving for a fly.”
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