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Question of the Week / Re: QotW - 17.09.24 - Are flies easier to swat if you move slowly?
« on: 02/10/2017 18:28:15 »
I catch them in a jar and let them loose outside. There is a technique to it, but should I share the details so that people can misuse it to kill beautiful wildlife? House/clothes moths are another issue though - there's no point in releasing them outside as they'll find their way back in or into other people's houses, at which point you just end up with many more of them needing to be killed, often using chemicals which kill all the poor spiders in the house at the same time. So, you have to kill those on sight, and the more cunning the moth, the more determined you have to be to catch it so that you don't make the mistake of breeding ever more cunning moths (if you're going to miss a few, it would actually be better to miss the stupid ones that are easiest to hit so that they can spread dim genes). You can learn a trick from the birds to help with this - when they target something that might fly off, some species hover near the fly and move from side to side, up and down, etc. - random directions without getting too close. This switches the fly out of mode one (where it waits until something gets close and then does a sudden runner [or flyer]) and into mode two where it just sits tight instead. Then it can be picked off easily.
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