Can flies recognize that I'm holding a flyswatter?
Has this ever happened to you? There’s a fly in the house, buzzing around you, so you go to the cabinet to get the swatter. But as soon as you start wielding it, the little bastard disappears. You set it down, and now he’s back, taunting you.
Ok so obviously flies don’t taunt, but do they have the capacity to recognize, even instinctually, that I’m holding a deadly weapon?
To me it seems absolutely like it, yes. For whatever reason, Flies are sophisticated nuisance animals, they got all the perks to be effective in that endeavour. If you signal them it's their life or death, it's even more interesting, prime directive is to dance on your nose by then.
Fortunately, they got a few "bugs in their code" which makes them a bit more controllable, I know of a few very interesting ones:
Fear of moving fabric:
Be it a sock or a T-Shirt, once it starts to whirl through the air somewhere near them, they panic. Try and compare, take a solid object (even a fly swatter) or your hand and just whoosh it close by. Often they are back within the blink of an eye, even more annoying now. Try the same with something out of fabric, they will keep 10 times the distance afterwards.
Possible explanation: Their fly brain interpretes it similar to bird wings, a threat even they take serious.
Sleep mode in dim light:
While flies seek out a place to sleep in the light of a single tea candle, you can still see them. Incredibly useful to get rid of flies in small spaces like a caravan or a tent. Possible explanation: They just lack vision, so their only option is to chill at the closest surface.
Fear of crawling into openings:
If a fly wakes you up way before your time, build a little cave in front of your face (Think of the entrance to an Igloo). They won't crawl in for the life of them.
Possible explanation: The ones crawling into the mouth of something often didn't live to pass on their genes.
Water bottle reflection:
How to: Fill a clear bottle with water, close the lid and put it up where they have to see it. I have to admit, I long thought of this as being silly and esoteric Mumbo Jumbo, yet after several attempts at it when Flies became unbearably annoying outside, there are clear differences in their behaviour once you put these up. They will still annoy you from angles where they have no line of view to the bottle, so prepare to set up a few.
Possible explanation: Reflections messing with their vision, esoteric Mumbo Jumbo.
I'd be happy to read some more if you came across something that messes with them, I hate to simply kill or poison them (Don't want fly innards in my living space or poison my surroundings) but to be annoying in revenge is fair game, especially when you get rid of them that way. Btw: how do the salt gun folks deal with the salt being literally everywhere after a shooting spree?
I keep a big ass butterfly net around the house for flies. Sometimes they are tricky and good at avoiding the net, but I get them eventually and let them go outside. The trick is getting back inside without them following me. The best way is to gently make a fist around them at the tip of the net and push your fist out the cat door and then pull the net backwards until they are released. This only works if you have a cat door.
They also seem to lack vision straight above them if they’re sitting on a light surface. So if they land on your computerscreen or window when it gets darker, you can flick them and they won’t see you coming. This will only stun the things for a second, so be quick to actually kill them/pick them up and dispose of them.
Sleep mode in dim light: While flies seek out a place to sleep in the light of a single tea candle, you can still see them. Incredibly useful to get rid of flies in small spaces like a caravan or a tent. Possible explanation: They just lack vision, so their only option is to chill at the closest surface.
Seems to work on mosquitos as well BTW. Whenever one of those bastards made its way indoors, I turn off the lights, point a flashlight at the brightest wall in the room and wait. In most cases the mosquito will land somewhere on the bright part of the wall eventually (might take a few minutes tho) and can be swatted.
I totally need to try out that water bottle trick tho. That sounds like a neat, poison-free alternative to hunting the buggers down yourself.
I kill them with a spray bottle filled with 70% isopropyl alcohol. The mist is difficult to avoid, and once they’re knocked down, I drown them with a few more blasts. I think the surface tension of the alcohol is able to permeate the tiny holes (spiracles) that would normally keep water out of their respiratory system. No guts, just wipe away the fly’s body and any excess alcohol. Anything you miss will simply evaporate. Bonus: 70% isopropyl alcohol is a disinfectant, so you’ve already helped clean any disease the fly may have been carrying.
I’ve noticed this with even fruit flies. I use an electric swatter (in addition to the apple cider vinegar trick) to get at them, and they seem to recognize that something is threatening them. Maybe the electric swatter emits some sort of sound that only they can hear, I don’t know. But as soon as I pull that swatter out, they all seem to disappear.
I have had much better luck using a cup to trap them. Seems to me that they aren’t as likely to fly away when I approach slowly with a cup to trap them inside the cup, then slide a piece of paper or cardboard across the opening and release them outside. Of course only works when they land on a flat surface like a window.
They do, they do. Also they have phasing abilities as well, you clap your hands thinking 100% you’ve quashed them, but then their corpse is not in your palms, and you see them flying around taunting you.
As silly as they seem, the anti-fly salt shotguns work super well precisely because you aren’t swinging them wildly around, alerting the flies. You can almost poke them with the barrel tip if you move slow, but the actual shot comes too fast to evade.
I think the simple answer is that they are much smaller, so their neurons are shorter, so signals get there much quicker. They don’t really have brains though so I wouldn’t be too jealous.
I maintain a silly belief that flies can in fact see a few seconds into the future, and that’s how they evade things so deftly.
This is why my family invested in some of those Salt Guns you can use to kill flies. If you’re going to be driven crazy, it should at least let you release some steam.
This isn’t silly - at all. Fly’s perception of the world is like bullet time to us. They can see something much faster than we can comprehend - that’s how they effortlessly move away from your swats
If you want to catch a fly, move to them VERY slowly and cup a hand or glass over them to capture them. If you move slow, it’s more difficult for them to perceive something is moving towards them - much like it’s difficult for us to perceive a rising tide or watch a plant grow.
I don’t think they can recognize the flyswatter, but they do seem to find a sudden increase in movement around them suspicious. Move slowly and strike from close up.
Instinctively, I doubt it. But they can pick up on the air moving around from you trying to swat at it, which is why it’s such a pain in the ass to capture to release or kill one. They are able to tell well before they’re captured/caught that something is coming for them.
This BU blog entry from 2012 gives a lot of interesting information on the many ways they are able to evade us.
We have 2 advantages: we can build tools for specialized purposes, like killing flies. We can analyze misses and predict where a fly will be when it tries to evade a strike.
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