December 28, 2007

"When a fly lands on a ceiling, does it execute a barrel roll or an inside loop?"

Questions The Explainer never answered.

12 comments:

Ron said...

Do German flies use an Immelmann?

Do flies evade my flyswatter through some sort of chaff/flare combo?

rhhardin said...

It grabs on with its front legs and winds up facing the opposite way.

Anonymous said...

I agree with rhhardin. So does the straigtdope website and Natural History magazine.

http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a5_043.html

So the question has been answered.

rhhardin said...

You can nail flies pretty reliably by clapping your hands about two inches above them. That's where they go when the sense hands coming.

Lautreamont :

Here is the most expeditious, though not the best, way to kill flies: one crushes them between thumb and forefinger. Most writers who have treated this subject thoroughly have calculated with great plausibility that in a number of cases it is preferable to cut off their heads.

Anonymous said...

with a compound eye, it does a triple, triple, triple curl forward and doubles back in a triple, triple, triple orbit! I thought everyone knew that!
Ted

AllenS said...

They land on the ceiling, by doing a back flip.

Simon said...

I voted for a different question - the one about the gravimetric consequences vis-a-vis other bodies in the solar system of eliminating Jupiter. I guess the answer would have to be "none" (save for the Jovian satellites), but I'm unsure enough that it'd be interesting to see an answer.

Mr. Forward said...

1: When Chuck Norris lands on a fly he executes a barrel roll, an inside loop and the fly.

2. There ain't no flies on Chuck Norris

hdhouse said...

and all this time I thought that the room flipped over to accomodate them...

KCFleming said...

Geez, if my fly ever got onto the ceiling, I'd just stop taking Cialis.

A barrel roll would just be showing off, and might induce priapism lasting 4 hours or more.

And an inside loop? Better bring a small sewing kit with you; those things can break you know.

dbp said...

A House Fly, describes in great detail why each of our ideas on how they land are idiotic, then executes the landing in a way which seems obvious in retrospect.

Chip Ahoy said...

I cannot contemplate the fly's landing pattern until I resolve the problem of how a cat would land if a piece of buttered toast was lashed to its back.