Re: Do house flies see at the same speed as humans?

Dear Sweeney:

Thank you for your interesting question. Those studying neuroscience may be impressed by your question. Because maybe all of them didn't think about those questions, which may be a big flaw in the scientific community, I think.

Instead of giving you a answer directly, first let us review how vision functions. A photon reflected from the subject enters the eye, then hits photoreceptors, bipolar cells, and ganglion cells in the retina. Then through optic nerves to neurons in the thalamus in the brain. Through this pathway, visual information is transduced from one place to another place in electric and chemical signals alternatively. Within the same neurons in the pathway, signal is transduced in electric signal, which is called action potentials. At the terminal of one neuron, the electrical signal is transformed into chemical singal and transduced to the next neuron. As one can image, there is a long travel before vision is produced. It is reasonable to think that the distances of visual pathway are different and the signal transduction speed may also be different between house fly and huamn. So it is hard to deduce who is fast. When one try to deduce it, the possible tiny difference in visual production mechanism should also be considered.

So a convisible answer is to do experiment to find the answer. But, can we design one? Yes. The experiment used to measure light speed came into my mind. In this, an electrode probe can be used to record the response which can tell us when an image is seen by house fly and human. Then we can know the time difference to know who see objects faster?

Does my answer make any sense to you? Merry X'mas!