Obama Fly Swat Reveals President's Impressive Hand-Eye Coordination

June 18, 2009

Yes, President Obama can swat flies, thanks to good inherited hand-eye coordination perfected by eating right and shooting hoops during off hours.

The Commander in Chief's skills were put to the test Tuesday during an interview with CNBC's John Harwood. As the two men were discussing the country's economic crisis, a fly that had been buzzing around the room throughout the interview began to zero in on Obama. It's hard to say why, but insects often gravitate toward certain odors, such as cologne components, food on the breath of an individual or just a person's unique body chemistry. According to Purdue University studies, mosquitoes tend to bite people who have recently consumed a banana, while yellow jackets hate hair spray. Honeybees dislike sweet scents, even though they hang around honey.

The fly wouldn't let up, and began to get on the president's nerves. Like a patient spider, Obama waited for it to land on the back of his left hand. Down came his right hand on the fly. Down went the insect.

I keep a plastic cup with lid in my office to trap bugs and haul them outside. But you have to admit, this would be difficult to do during a live television interview. A PETA spokesperson commented, "He isn't the Buddha, he's a human being and human beings have a long way to go before they think before they act."

Swatting a fly with your bare hand is no easy feat either, as Caltech scientists Michael Dickinson and  Gwyneth Card recently determined.

The researchers used high resolution, high speed digital imaging of fruit flies faced with a looming swatter. In the instant before a fly can usually zip to safety, its tiny brain calculates the location of the impending threat, comes up with an escape plan, and places its legs in an optimal position to hop out of the way in the opposite direction. All of this action takes place within about 100 milliseconds after the fly first spots the swatter.

"This illustrates how rapidly the fly's brain can process sensory information into an appropriate motor response," Dickinson explained.

Image credit: Mark Turney

Fleet-footed flies even tweak the escape technique, depending on the direction of the threat. Keep in mind that these insects possess a nearly 360-degree field of view, so they can see behind themselves. If a swatter comes in at a 50 degree angle, a fly can move its middle legs forward and lean back, raising and extending its legs to push off backward.

If the swatter comes from the back, no problem. The fly simply moves its middle legs a tiny bit backwards and leans its whole body in the opposite direction just before it jumps.

"We also found that when the fly makes planning movements prior to take-off, it takes into account its body position at the time it first sees the threat," Dickinson said. "When it first notices an approaching threat, a fly's body might be in any sort of posture depending on what it was doing at the time, like grooming, feeding, walking, or courting. Our experiments showed that the fly somehow 'knows' whether it needs to make large or small postural changes to reach the correct preflight posture. This means that the fly must integrate visual information from its eyes, which tell it where the threat is approaching from, with mechanosensory information from its legs, which tells it how to move to reach the proper preflight pose."

So what is the optimal way to swat a fly?

"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," he advised.

Staying a step ahead of one's opponents isn't a bad skill for a leader. President Obama is also clearly a hands on, take charge person. Insects aren't always the worse for wear if they creep or fly into his path. Note how he handled this earlier encounter with an arachnid:

Comments

[don miller]

hard to believe that no one realizes that in slow motion , high resolution and macro focus we would have seen the guts of a known disease vector being splattered on the back of his hand and his palm. no hand washing and whose hand did he shake next. Snatching it out of the air is what I would have expected from a truely aware of the situation type person.

[Disgusted]

He swatted a fly for crying out loud! I know you libs love to hype everything the messiah does as miraculous but this is ridiculous! Millions of people do it every single day...even lower life forms like you and me!

[Sherry]

I don't agree with Obama on most things, but if a fly is bothering you, kill it. The PETA people can come on out to my horse barn and catch all the flies they want. Please, take them away! We can't kill them fast enough.

[Deborah]

There has always been something eire about Obama, that I could never put words to until now...He not only mezmarizes idoits but flies too...stranger then fiction to true to ignore!

[roger peppe]

The best way of hand-swatting a fly I've encountered is to clap your hands *above* the fly - it tries to escape straight up and gets caught between your hands. Works about 75% of the time for me. Much better than swatting directly (and as a bonus, it doesn't leave fly remnants on the surface either).

[Deborah]

Ok Harry Potter could make snakes do as he commanded and now the Messiah can make spider move at his will...wow stranger then fiction but to stupid to ignore! Another example of the press conjuring up a story line and missing the facts like i.e. that the guy doesn't even have a birth certificate to run for prez! Negligence in reporting or has the spider charmer/fly swatter taken control of their minds ...time will tell when the media is either brushed off or enilated by enemy!

[JEL]

This so stupid to make an issue of you know who swatting and killing a fly. WOW the media has really got some serious issues to make this important. What a rediculous story BAD BAD BAD BAD BAD BAD

[Jason]

This is a joke, right?

[whatever]

funny....but really not worthy of news. Really Obama + anything does not equal news.

[Jeremiah]

Inside scoop, the fly was lethargic because it drank the same cool aid the reporter drank before the interview began.

[Jon]

OMG! A news story on Obama swatting a FLY?
What's the next story, that his farts smell like roses? Coming up next on ABC...

[sanjeeva]

clean perfect people don't like to swat fly's no matter how bothering they are because whether we spot a fly, the dirty liquid in it's stomach comes out and getting applied to our skin ... disgusting !

[sanjeeva]

and by the way
that a very experienced shot !
so I guess, he might have killed lots of innocent flies, in his past.

[Rhi]

This is exactly why I try to avoid the news.

[sanjeeva]

I think, Obama wiped his a** in the CNBC studio washroom and he forgot to wash the hands !!!

[Jojo]

Is this a right wing blog? I will stop watching Discovery Channel if this is true.

[Jennifer Viegas]

More fly wing than right wing, at least for this entry, Jojo.

[Sgt. Howard]

... and we are HOW desperate for a story of something he accomplished properly that we are arguing the right of a fly to exist...?

[The Cat]

The reason that this is news is because our last President could barely tie his shoelaces. We're all just so relieved to have a sharp, aware person in the White House.

[SrBlanco]

So, why is it everyone thinks this is an article about Obama? I know you haters have nothing better to do (except ignoring the real reason he's in office: the poor performance of past REPUBLICANS), but please focus on this article for the scientific content, not the coincidental.

Also: PETA stands for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. Do flies and spiders now qualify as animals? I could have sworn they were insects...

[trr]

SrBlanco: as one interested in science, you should know that insects ARE animals. Why do people think it's a story about Obama? Oh, let's see...his name is the first word in the headline, the article discusses his AMAZING skills, and there are not one but two videos of him being AMAZING!

[Adam Weissman]

While we are talking about science and insects, it's relevant to note that science reveals that PETA's ethical argument is not as absurd as it might appear on the face.

It appears that insects are not the mindless automatons that conventional wisdom assumes them to be:

http://discovermagazine.com/2007/jan/cockroach-consciousness-neuron-similarity

[Jamie]

I think it's funny how all the people complaining here about "OMG THIS ISN'T NEWS" are missing the point(s):

First, for god's sake you are on a BLOG and you expect everything covered here to be "important news"? I find that hilarious. Maybe on SOME blogs there is only "important" news, but this is really just one of those "gee whiz" science/current events blogs, where really pretty useless but mildly entertaining stories mingle with the ones of moderate or serious note, so long as they can all be related to science or nature. This is why it's a blog and not Time Magazine. (Though granted, Time might be inclined to "cover" such a thing as this - but probably only in one throwaway joke sentence on the "Pop Chart" page). Remember: the whole point of the mixed blessing that is the internet is that it doesn't have to go through the same filters and constraints (such as column length and running time) that old-school media does.

Second: Since it IS a science blog, I actually have to commend them for taking something trivial that popped up briefly in the MSM as a silly little blooper clip (Obama swatting an obnoxious little fly) and then extending it into a perfectly interesting - and legitimately informative - article on both insects and hand-eye coordination. Which is really the only reason it was posted here, which anybody with common sense would know... but then, I've noticed of the internet as of late that the people with common sense are often the least likely to post comments.

No, it's not important news. But it's mildly amusing; that's the only reason people (other the a very peeved PETA) are "covering" this in the blogosphere and the MSM; if you notice, outside the blogosphere, the only way it's tended to be covered is in that "haha, look at this little blooper" way that they might if any given Pres., say, stepped in dog doo. It's what they call a "human interest" story - translation: "pointless but entertaining filler".

Anyone who doesn't know and can't seem to comprehend what a "human interest story" is, is quite frankly probably a bit beyond help in terms of ignorance.

[M]

PETA is taking it too far this time. How many flies does it take to make a coat?

[Jill]

George Bush caught a shoe, Obama caught a fly.
PETA blows everything out of proportion. Now, is everybody happy?