Interesting Facts

"The Making of a Fly" - a book about the molecular biology of a fly from egg to fully-fledged insect was advertised on Amazon for $23.6m (£14.3m). (Now, I'm sure it is a fabulous book, but did it really deserve such a high price tag? No, it didn't. It hit that figure briefly on the Amazon site after the algorithms used by Amazon to set and update prices started outbidding each other. Yes, an algorithm written by a human went haywire. An amusing insight into the chaos that may be caused if we put all our trust in the machines we use every day.)

Aristotle stated that flies have four legs. He was so trusted that his assertion was repeated in natural history texts for more than a thousand years. (Some people defend him by saying some flies, like the mayfly, walk on four legs and use their two forelegs to hold onto the female during mating in flight. I just like to think he got it wrong.)