What’s small, annoying, and hard to kill? If you guessed the obvious answer, then you’re absolutely correct. (If you were thinking your little brother, than I’m sorry) I’m talking about those pesky full grown maggots with wings that never die by the slap of the swatter. Killing them is almost impossible. I’ve never had success with killing these insects, so I’ve learned to just deal with them. I never understood why flies were so successful in avoiding the swatter until I read a brief article on Yahoo.
I soon learned that a fly’s brain is wired to dodge the swatter. Whenever a fly senses a possible threat, it instinctively changes their preflight posture to escape in the opposite direction. Flies, I never knew, are pretty smart insects. Michael Dickinson of the California Institute of Technology explained that in just 200 milliseconds, a fly can figure out where a threat is coming from and from there, can set in motion, a set of movements to position legs and wings.
If you swat from the front, the fly will move the middle legs forward, lean back and raise their back legs for a backward take off.
If you’re trying to swing the swatter from the side, be cautioned that the fly has a way to outsmart this. The fly will only lean to the other side and then take off.
To successfully kill a fly, the trick is not to aim for the starting position.
Source: yahoo news.
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