{"id":546,"date":"2009-03-12T15:51:37","date_gmt":"2009-03-12T20:51:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lstr.net\/blog\/?p=546"},"modified":"2009-03-12T15:53:01","modified_gmt":"2009-03-12T20:53:01","slug":"fruitflies-like-the-wind-time-flies-like-a-banana","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lstr.net\/blog\/2009\/03\/12\/fruitflies-like-the-wind-time-flies-like-a-banana\/","title":{"rendered":"Fruitflies like the wind, time flies like a banana&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Stop. Wait, reverse that. OK&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Another neat Eurekalert! feed story, one that offers tips for catching flies:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.eurekalert.org\/pub_releases\/2009-03\/ciot-csd031209.php\">Caltech scientists discover mechanism for wind detection in fruit flies<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Tiny, lightweight fruit flies need to know when it&#8217;s windy out so they can steady themselves and avoid being knocked off their feet or blown off course. But how do they figure out that it&#8217;s time to hunker down? According to a team led by California Institute of Technology (Caltech) scientists reporting in this week&#8217;s issue of the journal Nature, the flies have evolved a specialized population of neurons in their antennae that let them know not only when the wind is blowing, but also the direction from which it is coming.<\/p>\n<p>The behavior of fruit flies in the face of a stiff breeze is remarkable in and of itself, notes David J. Anderson, the Roger W. Sperry Professor of Biology at Caltech, and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Investigator. &#8220;We discovered that you can stop a fly dead in its tracks by blowing a gentle stream of air over it,&#8221; he explains, adding that the flies&#8217; immobility is so complete, you could pick one up with a pair of chopsticks as long as a steady stream of wind was passing over the insect. Once the wind stops blowing, however, the flies immediately start walking around again. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Here&#8217;s a link to the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.eurekalert.org\/multimedia\/pub\/12845.php?from=132755\">video<\/a>.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Stop. Wait, reverse that. OK&#8230; Another neat Eurekalert! feed story, one that offers tips for catching flies: Caltech scientists discover mechanism for wind detection in fruit flies Tiny, lightweight fruit flies need to know when it&#8217;s windy out so they can steady themselves and avoid being knocked off their feet or blown off course. But [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5,6,17,3,18,8],"tags":[84,38],"class_list":["post-546","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dumb-thoughts","category-gregs-reference","category-pr-guy","category-rant-andor-rave","category-science-fandom","category-sciencegeek-porn","tag-fruitflies","tag-science","post-preview"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7V2xo-8O","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lstr.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lstr.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lstr.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lstr.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lstr.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=546"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.lstr.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":549,"href":"https:\/\/www.lstr.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546\/revisions\/549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lstr.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lstr.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lstr.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}