Does anyone know anything about flies seeing time slower?...

I doubt that it has anything to do with the heartbeat rate. Think, rather, about the lifespan of a fly. It's a couple of days or so. For humans -- barring unforseen circumstances of disease or accident -- a lifespan is roughly 70 years, according to the Bible -- "three score years and ten." So a fly has to cram a whole lifetime into just a few days. That's what it's all about, basically.

All insects have prior lives as larvae where they gorge themselves.

I once read that if a fly was watching a movie it would interpret it as a slide show because it views time that slowly. 26 frames per second are fine for us but too slow for fly.

There is a fairly well established 'rule of thumb' that mammal lifespan is connected with the size of the creature, and the heart rate. Comparing the product of average heart rate and longevity for different animals seems to show that the number of heart beats per lifetime is about 526 thousand times the value of the product.

This means that an elephant lives longer than a hamster. An elephants average lifespan is about 70 years, and a hamster's about 3 years.

I don't think this means that 3 seconds to a hamster "seems the same" as 70 seconds would to an elephant. Only humans have either the concept of time, indeed, the apparatus for having any concepts at all.

Flies do seem to have quick reflexes and they do, I agree, seem to dart about very rapidly, but I think that the idea of a fly watching a movie is rather silly. They have compound eyes anyway. (They don't "see" like people. Neither do dogs or cats, as far as we can tell)

Furthermore, since elephants, hamsters (and flies!) don't, as far as we know, have conscious minds, or the ability to tell us what they experience, I don't see how anyone can tell.

Not sure about elephants not having concious minds. If I remember correctly, elephants are the only species apart from humans that display a visible reaction when they encounter deceased members of their species.

Insects don't have hearts.

Elephants are not the only mammals (aside from homosapiens) that experience grief.

Right, Builder, and right again.

We -- i.e. homo sapiens sapiens -- have this odd notion that we're the only ones to have any number of things, including emotions and a concept oif time. If you've ever seen a dog after its master has died, you know that the genus canis have emotions. If you've ever been owned by a cat, you know that the little critter knows pretty much to the minute just when you'll be opening the front door and bending down to scratch it behind the ears. There is some indication -- unconfirmed, but reliably reported -- that the higher primates, eg. gorillas, may have some concept of the spiritual.

^ This is the kind of theory I'm running on here...

But I take it from the other replies that it is not quite accurate...

Okay, so...say for instance someone or something COULD see time slower than we do... Could this be effected by how fast their heart beats, or how quickly their mind etc works?



So, so true....

It's because they hear your keys rattling in the lock, not because they can tell the time.

My cat is completely deaf, explain that one!

How you know that for sure, I don't know. Whatever. I still don't believe that cats can tell the time.

Well you'd kinda expect her to flinch if you made a really loud sound right next to her, no? You can stand there calling her and she'll suddenly catch you out the corner of her eye and jump up aswell... I think that pretty much proves it, she doesn't move if you make a loud noise, even when she's asleep.

Well they sure remember things, like if you show them a pouch of sealed food they'll know that it contains meat... Or if you shake a bag of biscuits from a few rooms away they'll come running through for food (this was when puss-cat wasn't deaf)... Little things might just remind them of something happening... *shrugs*

Animals don't work on clock time, but according to the light of the sun and the moon.

In the wild, animals have fixed routines. This time of year between 6:15 and 6:30 I can count on seeing a group of deer moving through the yard to eat whatever sprouted the day before.

Eventually they'll den up someplace else and visit some else's salad bar between 6:15 and 6:30.

Someone's always serving breakfast and this bunch starts every day with a good breakfast.

I'm sooooo familiar with that behavior pattern, Noddy.

Animals can't read a clock, certainly. I don't think that's what we're talking about. But they have a very good sense of time which serves their needs quite well. Migratory birds know when it's time to fly South, regardless of the weather at the time of thewir take-off. House pets know the approximate time their human is expected to get home, regardless of any key rattling in the lock. They get nervous if the key doesn't rattle at a given time. The concept of 12 o'clock may be alien to them but they're well aware when the sun is directly overhead.

Smaller animals seem to have quicker reflexes and quicker actions.
The laws of physics apply quicker at a smaller scale... and not just a little but a LOT!

If you raise a grain of sand over your head and let go, how long does it take to fall and hit your foot? You've got a good second or two to react and deal with it. If a fly does the same thing, it has to deal with it almost immediately. The time required for a fly is actually disproportionate to it's size.


Many relationships in physics are not linear, but exponential or geometric. If you double the size of a fly, it's surface area is not doubled but squared, and it's volume and mass are cubed. So, a larger animal has to grapple with it's own mass (compared to surface area or physical size) a lot MORE, to a greater degree than a smaller animal does.

That's why ants are "proportionally 1000 times stronger" than people. Mass is not a big deal at a small scale. Smaller things behave much "lighter" and therefore "quicker" than their size would suggest.

For one fly to lift another fly, it's ridiculously easy.
For a mouse to lift another mouse, it's not much effort.
For a dog to lift another dog, it's a little work.
For a person to lift another person, it's definitely a strain.
For an elephant to lift another elephant, it's a major undertaking.

The effects of time are exactly in this same proportion.
An elephant might take five minutes, a person five seconds, a mouse a fifth of a second, and a fly a fiftieth of a second.

Something half the size will have one-eighth the mass, so even "for it's size"
it seems to move four times quicker than "normal".

Re: Does anyone know anything about flies seeing time slower


Flies, as do most if not all insects, "see time" in terms of their rate of metabolism of the dissacharide, trehalose. As the in vivo levels of trehalose are depleted, overall metabolism falls, the insect "clock" stops ticking and the soul of the insect returns to it's creator.

Paceum in requiem.

Does that mean there are flies in Heaven?

Souls are in Heaven having lots of fun.

Must be a pain in the ass for the people up there having to swat flys away all the time.