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FLIES MAY EXPERIENCE something analogous with human fear when they are being chased by humans holding newspapers.
That is the finding of a new Caltech study that may help humans understand how their own brains are wired.
The study, which was done in the laboratory of David Anderson, Seymour Benzer Professor of Biology and an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, was published online in the journal Current Biology.
While they are not as close to humans on the evolutionary scale, their neurological systems are easier to study than mice.
Because researchers know the experience of human emotion, they might anthropomorphise those of an insect — just as you might assume that the shooed-away fly left your plate because it was afraid of your hand.
But there are several problems with such an assumption, says post-doctoral scholar William T Gibson, first author of the paper.
There are two difficulties with taking your own experiences and then saying that maybe these are happening in a fly. First, a fly’s brain is very different from yours, and second, a fly’s evolutionary history is so different from yours that even if you could prove beyond any doubt that flies have emotions, those emotions probably wouldn’t be the same ones that you have.
The researchers broke emotions down to their constituent building blocks or emotion primitives.
Gibson explains by analogy that emotions can be broken down into these emotion primitives much as a secondary color, such as orange, can be separated into two primary colors, yellow and red. “And if we can show that fruit flies display all of these separate but necessary primitives, we then may be able to make the argument that they also have an emotion, like fear.”
In the future, the researchers say that they plan to combine the new technique with genetically based techniques and imaging of brain activity to identify the neural circuitry that underlies these defensive behaviours, but they can’t tell us whether flies are afraid when you try to kill them.
“Our work can get at questions about mechanism and questions about the functional properties of emotion states, but we cannot get at the question of whether or not flies have feelings,” Gibson says.
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If you shoo the fly and he’s afraid, then why does he keep coming back?
Probably because he’s a nasty f*****
Probably because the fly has a very short memory…like a few milliseconds. Does it explain it? ;)
Keeps coming back for more, could be FG
Explain what?
Why are you winking?
What this boils down to is when flies take over the planet they will show us no mercy!
How come they can get in a room through a tiny gap, yet can’t fly out an open f@%ing door ?
SEAN
I’m sure Kenny could fill you in on that one.
I was on the bus the other day and i asked a woman for a lend of her newspaper, She said i could borrow her Ipad for the Journey.
I said “thanks”..Then you should have seen the look on her face when i whacked that fly, smushed him right cross the the handrail he was sitting on…
Love your comment Pearse. Should be comment of the week.
Open the window for a second in comes 20 flies,a bird and a Jehovah witness
I now can declare that I officially know everything after reading this article. My life is complete !!!!
Doing , I agree. It really is an awe inspiring piece of crap. People got paid for this?
I notice a copy of the Independent strikes more fear into a fly
Why did they use a picture of Breda O’Brien for an article about flies?
What a sight to wake up to, that stock photo is making me feel ill!
Colour not color.
Animals experience a strong reaction when in mortal danger. Who’ve have thought eh?
What do ya call a fly with no wings…………..a walk :D
Wonders which is best for swatting flies, a newspaper or spider-man comic ?
Try this
If you are trying to swat a fly away then move your hand slowly towards the fly instead of very fast.
Flys see things differently and with the slow movement of your hand it stuns them and they can move with shock.
Sounds crazy but it works
I have a pet fly called Barry the Bluebottle. He jyst sits on my shoulder in buzzing anticipation of my next dump :)
That picture is terrifying
I thought the understanding was a fly feels the compression of the air as you try to swat the mofo, long before your swatter lands on him and also that our movement in their world is equivalent to slow motion in ours.
Anyway who cares. We used to pull their wings and legs off when we were kids and then hunt em down with a magnifying glass. Such fun !
I used to do that to Daddy long legs, feel terrible about it now :(
Strange to try and imagine emotions we can’t have. Like trying to see behind your eyes.
It makes me feel good
Who cares anyway?
The Howard Hughes laboratory says it all really.. A fruit cake was Hughes.
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