Can Flies Feel Fear Like Humans?

When you go after a fly with a flyswatter, are they afraid? Do flies even feel fear?

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Do flies have fear (or something like it)?
"When fruit flies respond to the threat of an overhead shadow, are they afraid? That's a hard question to answer, say researchers reporting in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on May 14. However, their studies do show that flies' response to visual threats includes many essential elements of what we humans call fear."

Behavioral Responses to a Repetitive Visual Threat Stimulus Express a Persistent State of Defensive Arousal in Drosophila
"The neural circuit mechanisms underlying emotion states remain poorly understood."

Do Flies Have Emotions?
"No, despite some of the headlines that are spreading across the Internet, scientists have not found that flies are emotional beings, nor did they demonstrate that the insects experience feelings like fear in a similar way to us."
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[MoonBeamLaser]

"4 f's: Feeding, fighting, fleeing, and mating" Haha

[interstellarbruce]

a few years ago. an army of house flies invaded my kitchen. Like there were over 400+. they were in the glasses, on the counter, and all over the food. They were fearless, and did not fly off when you waved at them. So we where forced to bring out the spray. It was a massacre... but at least we saved humanity from a revolutionary invasion.

[TheInspire]

the 4 f's are:
Feeding
Fighting
Fleeing
Fmating

if you don't believe me, put on close captions and watch that part again.

[cczevak]

You would have thought fear would have been enough to convince them to fuck off my food.

[kikikanzaki]

Fly.. Are you afraid of me?
Fly: *Rubs hands, staring into your soul*

[NegativeNumbers]

When you ask them to pay for rent, they'd soon piss off.

[travismeta]

0:28 why do they rub their hands together like that? I always keep seeing flies do that. But I don't know what that really does.

[NeekoMonster]

I never understood why some people assume that most animals don't have emotions. Why would humans be the only organism to have feels?

[RonWolfHowl]

1:57 Four Fs: Feeding, Fighting, Fleeing, Fmating.

[lflee]

I always think if there is a friendly way to tell mosquitoes not to bite me. There should be more researches on how living things communicate.

[yongsun]

There's flies they get scared easily and then there's this one annoying fly who just doesn't care how much you move it won't leave.

[soupedkid]

feeding, fighting, fleeing and fertilizing.

[Lewwww]

Four F's: Feeding Fighting Fleeing.... Mating?! Mating = f***???

[Diiieman]

The four Fs? But mating isn't... Oooooh

[morgandiaz]

A fly is been with me about 20 minutes. Its totaly calmed, it walks on my hand from one to the other, Ive touched its wings and its totaly calmed. I would like to know if thet really feel... At least like us.

[DaSquyd]

The four F's: Feeding, Fighting, Fleeing, and Fuc-- Mating…

[demonicgamex]

FYI flies seem to hate bathroom spray and stuff so if you got some of that and you want them to get out ya room, spray some of that and they will be out of your room for bout 30 minutes

[lunadecat]

I sometime have two types of flies in my home, the fruit flies and quite similar looking flies that live in the soil of my plants. I have the weird feeling, these are more intelligent and curious. I hope there will be science about it sometimes.

[BudCharlesUnderVlogs]

Maybe it's more of a gradient than a specific line where something starts having emotions and being conscious. At one end there's humans, dolphins, dogs, otters and creatures like that which can fully experience emotions and life, at the other end there's inanimate objects like rocks and photons that can't feel a thing, in between there are many stages with varying degrees of consciousness. But that implies that computers are already able to some degree experience things, after all there is no way to tell between the way a sim reacts in SimCity 4 vs the way a fly reacts in real life. So we're already pretty much at the start of the singularity.

[ForeverNBish]

These studies are beginnning to point out what we should already know. All creatures elicit an emotional response to various stimuli. The complexity of these repsonses can vary, but all creatures have them.