One secret is their specialized hind wings. High-speed cameras show that flies' modified hind wings help with their speedy takeoffs.
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00:00Why are flies so hard to swat?
00:05A fly buzzes past your head and lands nearby.
00:09You grab a fly swatter and you strike.
00:12But no matter how quick you are, the fly escapes unharmed.
00:15What is it that makes flies so hard to swat?
00:19Flies have many adaptations that give them extra speed,
00:23maneuverability, and perception,
00:25making them very, very good at detecting and evading your swats.
00:30And new evidence shows that one of the ways they do that
00:33is with vibrations of stick-like structures with a knob at the end, called halteers.
00:39When halteers vibrate during flight,
00:41they're sensing body rotations and transmitting information to the flies' wings,
00:46which helps flies to stabilize their bodies.
00:48However, houseflies also vibrate their halteers while walking,
00:53but scientists didn't know why.
00:55So they looked at houseflies and their close relatives
00:58to see if oscillating halteers affected how the flies launch into the air.
01:03Scientists filmed flies during takeoff using high-speed cameras,
01:07recording footage at speeds up to 3,000 frames per second.
01:11They found that houseflies and other closely-related flies
01:14launch themselves around five times faster than other flies
01:18and with just one wingbeat.
01:20When scientists removed those flies' halteers,
01:23it took them longer to take off,
01:25and some took a nosedive and crash-landed.
01:28But halteers aren't the only secret weapon in a fly's evasive arsenal.
01:33Fruit flies can change course in under one one-hundredth of a second,
01:37about 50 times faster than an eye can blink.
01:40Flies also have exceptional vision, which helps them react to a threat,
01:44and adjust their trajectory within milliseconds before takeoff.
01:50With all these built-in advantages,
01:52it's no wonder that the fly you're trying to swat can easily escape and just buzz off.
01:59Aerodynamic flies.
02:01Just another one of life's little mysteries.