Michael Dickinson Quotes

#1. A fly with a brain the size of a salt grain has the behavioral repertoire nearly as complex as a much larger animal such as a mouse. That's a super-interesting problem from an engineering perspective.

Michael Dickinson

#2. The fruit flies we work with have the equivalent of about a 25 by 25 pixel camera. But that camera is very, very fast, about 10 times faster than the human visual system.

Michael Dickinson

#3. The robotic fly that we actually make the most use of in our laboratory is actually not a small thing, it's a giant thing. It has about a meter wing span, and it flaps in three metric tons of mineral oil. And it is a so-called dynamically scaled fly.

Michael Dickinson

#4. We discovered that fruit flies alter course in less than one one-hundredth of a second, 50 times faster than we blink our eyes, which is faster than we ever imagined.

Michael Dickinson

#5. Only flies have true halteres. In fact, the scientific term for flies, 'diptera,' means 'two wings.' Most insects, including bees, have two pairs of wings for a total of four. In flies, the hindwing pairs have been transformed through evolution into the halteres.

Michael Dickinson

#6. When you see a fly flitting around your hair or your potato salad, you might see an annoyance. But in my lab, you really see a marvelous machine: arguably the most sophisticated flying device on the planet.

Michael Dickinson

#7. If you watch a fly on, say, a coffee table, you'll see that they're rubbing their little legs together to groom themselves; they're actually quite clean creatures.

Michael Dickinson

#8. It is best not to swat at the fly's starting position, but rather to aim a bit forward of that to anticipate where the fly is going to jump when it first sees your swatter.

Michael Dickinson

#9. Fly flight is just a great phenomenon to study. It has everything - from the most sophisticated sensory biology; really, really interesting physics; really interesting muscle physiology; really interesting neural computations.

Michael Dickinson

#10. Although finding fruit flies in your wine or beer can be a bit annoying, I hope people will pause to admire the tenacity of these clever little creatures. They are really just hungry animals looking for something to eat, and have no intention of ruining your happy hour.

Michael Dickinson

#11. It is difficult, but intriguing, to imagine seeing the world as a fly might. First, flies don't have nearly the same visual resolution that we do ... so you have to imagine a fuzzier image. Second, fly eyes are faster than our own and are very sensitive to motion.

Michael Dickinson

#12. Although their maneuverability is limited, blind flies can fly remarkably well.

Michael Dickinson

#13. One of the fastest things a fruit fly does is take information from its eyes and react accordingly.

Michael Dickinson

#14. I grew up watching 'Star Trek.' I love 'Star Trek.' 'Star Trek' made me want to see alien creatures, creatures from a far-distant world. But basically, I figured out that I could find those alien creatures right on Earth. And what I do is I study insects.

Michael Dickinson