Fruit flies can manoeuvre like fighter jets - and that’s how they dodge death, University of Washington scientists discover

STOP flapping your hands in frustration and find a better weapon — this is why you can’t swipe the insect world’s Top Gun.

MOVE aside Maverick, there’s a bunch of natural born fighters out there that can outmanoeuvre even the best of the best from Top Gun.

Fruit flies, researches at the University of Washington (UW) have found, manoeuvre like fighter jets — and just like Tom Cruise’s character in the movie hit, they “feel the need for speed”.

Using video cameras to track the flies’ aerial moves, scientists found the insects use astonishingly quick midair banked turns to evade predators — or flapping human hands/swats/rolled-up papers in much the same way a fighter jet eludes an enemy.

While executing the turn, the flies showed that they could roll on their sides by more than 90 degrees, sometimes flying almost upside-down.

Quick thinking ... time lapse images from a high-speed video show how a fruit fly startled by a looming shadow (off camera at the bottom right) performs a rapid roll to bank away from the threat. Picture: F. Muijres/University of Washington

“These flies normally flap their wings 200 times a second and, in almost a single wing beat, the animal can reorient its body to generate a force away from the threatening stimulus and then continues to accelerate,” said Michael Dickinson, UW professor of biology and co-author of a paper on the findings in the April 11 issue of Science.

The fruit flies — a species called Drosophila hydei, which are about the size of a sesame seed — rely on a fast visual system to detect approaching predators.

“The brain of the fly performs a very sophisticated calculation, in a very short amount of time, to determine where the danger lies and exactly how to bank for the best escape, doing something different if the threat is to the side, straight ahead or behind,” Prof Dickinson said.

How the fly’s brain and muscles control these remarkably fast and accurate evasive manoeuvres is the next thing researchers would like to investigate, Prof Dickinson said.

Too fast ... fruit flies have been compared to jet fighters for their rapid moves.

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