Get Rid Of Flies With Water-Filled Plastic Bags?

Flies around the house have always been pesky, as they swarm around and cause our food to spoil, and I’ve always thought that the only ways to get rid of flies are to sway something at them, swat them flat or put some icky, sticky fly paper around. But having encountered this interesting picture made me think that my ideas about it are very limited, and I immediately wondered about the rationale behind the capability of water-filled plastic bags in driving flies out.

This picture was shared by my dear friend who’s currently in Korea, and he said that this is a typical way for restaurants there to get rid of flies. He was told that the shape of the human hand apparently scares insects. Other people claimed that the theory behind it is not necessarily with the hand-shaped bag – it’s with the light that is reflected by the water inside the bags, and it may either distort or blur insects’ vision, causing confusion. Some sites mention that pennies should be placed inside the water-filled bag: as the water magnifies them, it would resemble a bigger insect’s eyes, thereby scaring flies away.

I eventually read further along, just to get some reliable scientific explanations to back this up. According to the Tennessee Farm Bureau Federation, it’s really not about the pennies – it’s about the light that is refracted as it goes through the bag. If you go back to your biology notes from high school, you would find out that the fly’s eyes are largely complex, made up of about a thousand “mini eyes” that don’t focus or move. The refracted light causes distorted images as they are perceived by these non-focusing eyes, and these stimuli are interpreted differently by the fly’s brain. As a result it causes visual and spatial misinterpretation and the natural response of flies are to fly away from the refracted light.

However, there seems to be very limited information that really supports water-filled plastic bags as a way to get rid of flies. Yet while we’re waiting for some revelation coming from expert minds, wouldn’t the fun out of it be reason enough to give it a try?

Links:

http://www.tnfarmbureau.org/content/pennies-bags-water-make-flies-flee