Credit: Created by authors S.E. Palmer and S. Wang, with 3D fly illustrations from D.A. Drummond.
Flies make exceptionally fast escape maneuvers in response to visual threats (pink star). The behavior unfolds so rapidly that there is not time for vestibular (haltere) or visual feedback to control flight. Visual prediction that flows through the vertical sensing system’s “information bottleneck” may help control flight in this open-loop interval. This information could flow directly to the wing steering muscles, as an instantiation of the so-called “control-loop” hypothesis.