What happens to flies when you let them fly out the window of a car at 75 mph?

Submitted ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨colourlesspony@pawb.social⁩ to ⁨[deleted]⁩

I assume it’s a 100% chance of death for the fly but IDK. Maybe the can stay in the air long enough to slow down? I’m not sure how fly flight can work at that speed.

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gnufuu@infosec.pub ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Comments are split between certain death and no harm at all. I’d say the fly will have a slightly sore wing and feel grumpy for a while.

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- FatVegan@leminal.space ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Probably confused as shit, because they are now 30km away from home
  
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HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
A fly has a low terminal velocity, below 20 mph. This is good for a fly if it is dropped from a skyscraper. However, that isn’t happening here.

In the air, the fly is going to rapidly slow down as it leaves the turbulent wake of the car. While I expect the insect to live, it will likely be stunned as the air hits it. That also assumes there are no other cars on the road for the fly to hit.

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givesomefucks@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Really small things are really good at surviving anything involving gravity.

But it’s not a 0-75 acceleration either. They’d be sucked out and fine a second later. The danger would be getting pulled around the car due to its aerodynamics, putting it directly in front of the next windshield in traffic.

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- thirdBreakfast@lemmy.world ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  This. When your mass is so small, you live in a very different world than we do - momentum and gravity are tiny forces on you, but others such as air resistance and static are huge. Additionally they don’t have the sort of inner-ear positioning system we do - so no real sense of “up” and “down” that would be recognizable to us - so probably the inevitable tumbling motion as you are sucked out of the window would not be disorientating to the fly the way it would be to a big animal.
  
  So the answer is they will likely be fine. From their point of view the blob of air they are flying around in gets sucked out the window and they are just traveling in it. I imagine they would notice the acceleration, but it’s a tiny force on them. The sudden distortion to the block of air (being stretched out to fill the sudden low pressure zone outside of the car window) would be a big deal to the fly, but I don’t think enough to damage them.
  
  Source: idle speculation, and a long standing interest in cats surviving huge falls.
  
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DarrinBrunner@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
I don’t think it would hurt them at all.

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Drbreen@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
I think what’s more amazing is that we couldn’t come up with a more creative name for flies.

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- Small_Quasar@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Reminds me of a two partner joke I made up when I was eight or nine.
  
  What do you call a fly without wings?
  
  A walk.
  
  What do you call a frying pan with legs?
  
  A wok.
  
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- KryptoSynth@ani.social ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  how about haqs
  
  how about proppers
  
  how about buzzies
  
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Luci@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
I always assumed they just get pissed off because now they’re no where near their fly family and fly house

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- bstix@feddit.dk ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Bees and wasps will eventually die if they’re moved away from their hives, but flies have relatively short lives, so they don’t waste their time with settling down.
  
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  - Luci@lemmy.ca ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    So like a fly guys got a bunch of fly bitches on the side?
    
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- Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  LUCI!!! YOU GOT SOME SPLAININ’S TA DOOOOOOO!!!
  
  WAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!
  
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gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
What happens when you throw an ant out of the window of a skyscraper? Eh, they do just fine actually. These little creatures are surprisingly resilient.

It’s because when you scale things down, the ratio of mechanical strength to body mass gets much better. That’s why beetles can carry like 10x their own weight and stuff, while humans can’t.

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- Kolanaki@pawb.social ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Throwing an ant out of a building does not suddenly accelerate the ant to 75mph. The ant falling out of the window would not even reach close to that speed before hitting its terminao velocity.
  
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- FellowEnt@sh.itjust.works ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  See also squirrels/mice and other small rodents falling/jumping from trees. They DGAF because fall damage isn’t really a thing for them.
  
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BurgerBaron@piefed.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Flies live life in permanent bullet time so I think their low mass combined with much faster reaction speed makes the chances of survival higher in this scenario but I don’t know for sure.

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T3CHT@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
So birds can get their wings broken by sudden gusts while aloft. Without accounting for size (reynolds number) and reaction speed - a fly would suffer a similar fate.

But I’ve seen videos of insects and/or flies hit with directed blasts of air. They react very, very quickly by adjusting orientation and shape. If a fly tucks fast enough it might survive the aerodynamic forces due to its reaction speed, and be left to the fate of where it’s path goes while it slows to a flyable speed.

And size matters. What seems to us a thin and uniform body of air gas for them is thicker and rippling with waves of density and speed. The wrong placement might kill them with pure shear or high pressure, but I suspect they have the ability to surf those waves as well, and maybe even use them to steer through extreme conditions.

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- Scubus@sh.itjust.works ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  The acceleration over time(g force) is determined by the balance between the size and shape of the wing compared to the momentum of the flies body, as long as that proportion is extremely small it would fall below the material strength of the wings connective tissue. Seeing as their wings are extremely small and their momentum is extremely small, the only real variable here is the shape of their wings(technically im referring to its aerodynamic drag versus lift both with respect to the vector of motion, but were just gonna say shape{also when i say “wing” im referring to the area exposed to oncoming atmosphere, which would include the body}). As long as the shape isnt too big in comparison to the momentum, it should be fine.
  
  Tl;dr/eli5: if it tucks its wings it will survive. At that speed if it untucks its wings they get ripped off and the fly becomes a walk.
  
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- givesomefucks@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  
  They react very, very quickly by adjusting orientation and shape.
  
  They experience time slower, to them a second just feels longer. It’s like Neo in permanent “bullet time”.
  
  When I was a kid it was pretty easy to catch one alive in my hand. But now my reflexes have slowed and I can only do it from experience and luckily having large hands.
  
  But my big ass hand smacking one out the air and catching it in the same palm is going to hurt it more than going out a window, and weirdly enough I’ve never killed a fly catching it.
  
  They’re a lot sturdier than people think. Any amount of bounce and they’re cool.
  
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Azzu@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
My assumption is that they’d just be swept off with the wind and nothing else happening to them. But it depends if they hit the side of the car/the window frame once they go out, if they do, I assume it would end like the ones on my windshield, i.e. splat, if not, they just get accelerated to wind speed and once they are accelerated, it’s just like flying through 0 mph wind, even if relatively, they’re going 75 mph.

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Danarchy@lemmy.nz ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
For one thing their world is hella rocked for a hot second

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nutsack@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
The g-forces of changing directions so quickly as you step into the stream of wind I imagine would tear the fly apart, but I don’t know anything. so someone tell me that it’s the same as an ant falling from a skyscrapers

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CmdrShepard49@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
I imagine it would probably rip them to pieces, but then again what kind of drag does a fly encounter in the air?

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- postmateDumbass@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  You make a good poit, the fly body would last longer thsn the wing material.
  
  I bet the wings tear or are ripped away, leaving it just a matter of time before it becomes food or gets run over.
  
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BlackLaZoR@lemmy.world ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Flies are small and unlike you, they have armor/exoskeleton. Even if it hits something flat out at that speed it’s just temporary stun.

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- KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Uh, I assure you, if a fly hits something at a relative 75mph it’s not just going to be stunned.
  
  You can kill a fly (though usually only stun) by smacking it out of the air with you hand, which has a max speed of ~22mph.
  
  75mph is closer to a flick (though I believe a flick can go up to 100mph). A flick is enough to cause a fly to explode.
  
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  - BlackLaZoR@lemmy.world ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    
    A flick is enough to cause a fly to explode.
    
    If you slap it directly against a wall. Then yes. But if you hit it mid air it’s just a stun.
    
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