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?
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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.
How the fuck have we not got wee mini computer controlled lasers yet that take them out like a micro size star wars thingy
Because software is very brittle these days, it would occasionally perform surprise lasik on your guests.
They sell salt guns with laser sight attachments.
We have 2 of those and they kinda suck IMO
Someone did build an automated laser roach killing device once. Though I think it was fairly short range or had some caveat like that.
IIRC there's a YouTube video of it somewhere.
There's another one for mosquitos
No joke; scientists are working on such a thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosquito_laser
That absolutely does exist, but of course it is expensive as fuck.
And rage!
And my axe!
I just clap above them. Then they often fly an inch or two upwards... and get squished
I've never been able to execute that successfully. Also not as easy to do when they're on a vertical surface or the ceiling.
This is true. But i have a fly swatter as well. Its just not alwayd near me and so i often end up just attempting to clap them.
Isn't the point of the fly swatter being mesh to minimize those air currents?
I try to catch and release, specifically larger flies (been having a flesh fly problem recently) because it's just less cleanup.
They're easy to catch with a plastic cup and a piece of paper.
I don't think I have killed a fly in nearly a decade.
Yes, and I've done that too, but I've also had a number of them fly away as the cup closed in on them, even when the cup isn't moving quickly.