Although their maneuverability is limited, blind flies can fly remarkably well. Michael Dickinson Read Quote
It is best not to swat at the fly’s starting position, but rather to aim a bit forward of that to anticipate where the fly is going to jump when it first sees your swatter. Michael Dickinson Read Quote
A fly with a brain the size of a salt grain has the behavioral repertoire nearly as complex as a much larger animal such as a mouse. That’s a super-interesting problem from an engineering perspective. Michael Dickinson Read Quote
There’s so many mysteries related to how flies are able to make their way through the world. I’d certainly like to know a lot more about how their brain works. I’d certainly like to know a lot more about just how they’re put together. I mean, these animals are basically, topologically, spheres. They don’t have bones as we do, of course. Michael Dickinson Read Quote
The robotic fly that we actually make the most use of in our laboratory is actually not a small thing, it’s a giant thing. It has about a meter wing span, and it flaps in three metric tons of mineral oil. And it is a so-called dynamically scaled fly. Michael Dickinson Read Quote
The fruit flies we work with have the equivalent of about a 25 by 25 pixel camera. But that camera is very, very fast, about 10 times faster than the human visual system. Michael Dickinson Read Quote
When you see a fly flitting around your hair or your potato salad, you might see an annoyance. But in my lab, you really see a marvelous machine: arguably the most sophisticated flying device on the planet. Michael Dickinson Read Quote
It is difficult, but intriguing, to imagine seeing the world as a fly might. First, flies don’t have nearly the same visual resolution that we do… so you have to imagine a fuzzier image. Second, fly eyes are faster than our own and are very sensitive to motion. Michael Dickinson Read Quote
Like many insects, flies are most sensitive to green light. This means that they would see their world as ‘black and white,’ in that they can’t see the multiple colors required to reconstruct a color image of the world. They do, however, have specialized cells that enable them to see ultraviolet wavelengths. Michael Dickinson Read Quote
Only flies have true halteres. In fact, the scientific term for flies, ‘diptera,’ means ‘two wings.’ Most insects, including bees, have two pairs of wings for a total of four. In flies, the hindwing pairs have been transformed through evolution into the halteres. Michael Dickinson Read Quote
