Saturday, August 30, 2008

Research news: Flies In Danger Escape With Safety Dance

The News:
Flies In Danger Escape With Safety Dance
by Joe Palca
Morning Edition, August 29, 2008 · You may think you know how to swat a fly, but Michael Dickinson's work could teach you a thing or two.
Dickinson used superslow-motion video cameras to study how a fly avoids getting swatted. First, he and his graduate student Gwyneth Card coaxed the fly to stand on a glass prism anchored to the middle of a small moat. The prism let him see the fly from below and the side simultaneously.
Then, he moved a kind of mini fly swatter toward the fly and recorded how the fly reacted. Read on...

The Research:
Read the research behind this story in the journal Current Biology.

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