When a fly is born...

Light

Up The World
Nov 24, 2001
2,127
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...how come it knows how to do fly stuff straight away, whereas babies are useless and shit for years?
 
Hoho, but seriously, somebody must know about flies.
How do they work? How come they know what to do?
 
I don't think they're aliens.
Next answer please.
I need to know.
 
Light do you really want to have a serious answer? Well flys aren´t born, they are holometabolic insects. Egg--> maggot --> fly. Most of the things a fly have to know in its short life is genetically predefined. So every fly got a special composition of olfactory receptors on its antenna and on maxillar pulpae (located on the "mouth" of the fly). The fly just follows the smell of food (fruits, carrion, feces, mammals---> blood:loco: or the pheromones of a female fly... eating and breeding these are most essential things a fly has to do... Life could be so simple...:erk: But a fly also learns some things in its short life. Many behavioural studies that involve learning are done with drosophila (fruit fly) and also biochemical studies of the basics of learning processes.
 
That's fantastic, thanks very much!

But....
....how does it actually work, like? Walking and flying about and that. Does it learn in the egg?
 
brain impulses which are triggered for certain useful purposes, cos the situation asks for that, instinctively. it's more chemistry than emotion, if u ask me.