How a fly sees the world – and why understanding its vision can help prevent disease

By Roger Santer, Lecturer in Zoology, Aberystwyth University
Matthew Sparks, PhD Candidate in Entomology, Swansea University

Jakob von Uexküll was a Baltic German biologist ahead of his time, intrigued by the idea that animals inhabit unique perceptual worlds quite unlike our own. In 1934, he described angling for flies by swinging an adhesive-covered pea on a thread, finding that male flies would dive on the pea and be caught. Within the perceptual world of a fly, the swinging pea was a potential mate.

We can’t be exactly sure what a fly’s perceptual world looks like, but we know it must be very different to our own. And learning about it can do much more than satisfy our curiosity. It could help keep people…

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