Why are flies faster than humans?

Question

Why is it so hard to swat a really annoying fly that keeps harrassing you? And why cant we eradicate them? What is their purpose?

Answer 1

Not only can flies see in all directions and have great eyes for motion detection they have another sense we lack. hairs between the flies wings detect changes in air pressure such as one created my a moving object like a hand. When such changes are detected the hairs send a signal straight to the wings to fly, thus bypassing the brain and the time it would take to process the information.

Interestingly you can get much closer to the fly by wiggling your hand back and forth like a leaf blowing in the wind. I have gotten within 6 or 8 inches this way. Then on the next downward stroke continue until the fly is swatted. This works because the fly is programmed to ignore leaves blowing in the wind or the hairs would be constantly triggering flight. This is how preying mantids and chameleons hunt as well.

Another trick is to clap above them.

Answer 2

Flies can see in almost 360 degrees- so they can take off in practically ANY direction- making them VERY hard to swat. ONE Fly can multiply into the MILLIONS in the course of one Season- so you can FORGET ABOUT killing them all. And they DO have MANY important purposes; some of which include- naturally "recycling" organic wastes, plant pollination, and being a VERY important source of food for birds, bats, amphibians & beneficial Insects... (Oh, and Humans CAN fly faster than a Fly can- as long as there are no flies on the Plane WITH them! :) ).

Answer 3

this is a puzzling question! and there is greater advantageous than one answer. at the start, the Galileo get entry to probe that slammed into Jupiter's environment reached a velocity of 109,000 miles in line with hour with regards to the gas huge. The quickest probe (relative to Earth), is the recent Horizons probe, that's vacationing at approximately 31,000 mph. And, finally, the Messenger spacecraft, en course to an orbital project around the planet Mercury, will attain a velocity of virtually one hundred fifteen,000 mph. (relative to the sunlight), even regardless of the shown fact that the sunlight is "purely" between 28 and 40 5 million miles from Mercury.

Answer 4

Flies are extremely light (little mass) so they can change direction far more quickly than a human change the direction of their hand. They're more maneuverable.

Eradicating flies would eliminate one of the primary agents of decay. Decay is required to recycle dead flesh (and plant material).

We need flies!

Answer 5

if u go into a hyperbaric chamber (increase the surrounding air pressure) with a fly---when you get to about 3 times normal atmospheric pressure---the fly has has great difficulty in flying in this thicker air--standard joke is that it becomes a walk