Slashdot Mirror
Fruit Flies, Fighter Jets Use Similar Evasive Tactics When Attacked
vinces99 writes: "When startled by predators, tiny fruit flies respond like fighter jets – employing screaming-fast banked turns to evade attacks. Researchers at the University of Washington used an array of high-speed video cameras operating at 7,500 frames a second to capture the wing and body motion of flies after they encountered a looming image of an approaching predator (abstract). 'We discovered that fruit flies alter course in less than one one-hundredth of a second, 50 times faster than we blink our eyes, and which is faster than we ever imagined.' In the midst of a banked turn, the flies can roll on their sides 90 degrees or more, almost flying upside down at times, said Florian Muijres, a UW postdoctoral researcher and lead author of the paper. 'These flies normally flap their wings 200 times a second and, in almost a single wing beat, the animal can reorient its body to generate a force away from the threatening stimulus and then continues to accelerate,' he said."
Why are politicians similar to flies?
They both eat shit and bother people.
(rimshot)
They can take my LifeAlert pendant when they pry it from my cold dead fingers.
Actually, I think the limit of the analogy was that both fruit flies and fighter jets use banked turns during evasive maneuvers. A banked turn is an obvious choice for a fighter jet, but when you get down to the size of a fruit fly, the aerodynamics are different and so it's interesting that this is still a preferred turning strategy.