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this post was submitted on 29 Oct 2023
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I used to work with this old guy. He was one of those dudes that was insufferable, but at work he was a semi-interesting story teller. But really it was because his desk was next to the back door exit. If you wanted to sneak out, you had to do it past his desk. And you had to be on his good side to avoid any leaky mouths…
Anyway, this one time I was sneaking out, it was summer. And he had the door open to let some fresh air in. In its place he had mounted a makeshift screen to keep the flies out. But this screen wasn’t quite tall enough and left the top foot of the door wide open. I had already seen a fly as I came down the hall, so when I saw his construction job, I’d found the reason…
So I said, “hey nice screen.” He says oh yeah, blah blah. Blah blah. Then I sort of point out the missing gap above the screen… he gets real serious and says:
“Flies can’t fly more than 6 feet off the ground.”
I had so many questions. What about flies on a mountain? What about flies inside a skyscraper? My head was salivating for more chunks of juicy knowledge from this guy… but alas I had my sneaky schedule to keep, and I said wow, cool. And left.
But the confidence from this guy could not be matched.
So, I was curious and decided to look it up. Turns out most flying insects are dependent on air temperature! As long as the air is above about 50F, they can fly in it.
So... If the top of your screen is high enough that it's less than fifty up there, you're good! 😄
Flies are pretty much international though, it's really really unlikely they use something as outdated as Fahrenheit, let's face it
The proper term is cosmopolitan. I mean, in case anyone cares lol
Arguably, the "ground" is relative. Second floor? Theres still a floor, which is a ground if you didn't know otherwise. Presumably this power is not sea level sensitivity.
However, I've seen flies walking on ceilings, which are usually 8 ft. So...
Maybe as it was walking on the ceiling it counted the ceiling as the ground as it was below its feet, or it counted the floor on the other side as ground. They aren't really the smartest of creatures, so who knows.
Trying to remember 100% when I’ve seen a fly upstairs. Pretty sure I must have but now I’m questioning…
Can they go up stairs if they just do 1 at a time to go no higher than 6 feet?
I can see the possible information he garbled. I can easily see flies not generally flying over a few meters in height. Their food is generally low down, as is cover to hide in. If they flew higher then they would be at risk of both predictors (bats and birds) and cold, for no real gain.
There might have been a scientific paper that noted the fly's (self imposed) height limit. "Generally like to stay below 2m" became "can't fly above 6' via junk science reporting.
I might be completely wrong. But I do find it interesting to try and reverse how the various insane "facts" that some people come out with come from.
I'm curious to know why he left the gap. Like, was it on purpose to see who would ask so he could flex his worldly knowledge or?