[quote=Uncwilly;174652]You can catch more flies with honey.....[/quote]

Or maybe not...
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[QUOTE=__HRB__;174654]Or maybe not...
[CENTER] [ATTACH]3695[/ATTACH][/CENTER][/QUOTE]It depends on the fly. The term "fly" is about as informative as the word "mammal".

Drosophilids feed on ripe fruit, by and large. Ripe fruit tends to ferment to produce alcohol (and Drosophilids have a fully functional Adh gene to deal with it, as do we) which itself oxidises to acetic acid. The smell of acetic acid very probably indicates that ripe fruit is in the vicinity.

Other flies, such as the tsetse, feed on live mammals. They tend to follow scents such as acetone which are produced by mammalian skin.

Other files are coprophages. They tend to be attracted by isocyanides, thiocyanides, phosphines and other such compounds.

Nectar feeding flies will indeed be attracted to sweet smelling substances.

Overgeneralization: don't overgeneralize in the presence of pedants.

Paul

[quote=xilman;174656]It depends on the fly.[/quote]

No. It depends on counting flies and applying a comparison operator.

[quote=xilman;174656]Overgeneralization: don't overgeneralize in the presence of pedants.[/quote]

Please do not confuse literacy with pedantry.

The common house fly is better caught and trapped using honey as both bait and trap, rather than using a clear vinegar as bait and trap.

[quote=Uncwilly;174668]The common house fly is better caught and trapped using honey as both bait and trap, rather than using a clear vinegar as bait and trap.[/quote]

[[I]citation needed[/I]]

According to [URL]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housefly[/URL] they are poop-eaters, but as honey tends to be very low in poop-content, my first guess would be that if this works at all, the honey is approximately 1% lure and 99% trap.

For the record:

My weapon of choice for decimating flies is a mechanical extension of the arm called [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fly_swatter"]flyswatter[/URL]. Devices operating on the same principle such as [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mace_%28club%29"]these[/URL] are perfect for control of the religious population.

Of course one could use deception to get religious people to bash each other and then bash the survivors, but where's the fun in that?

EDIT: Since survival of the fittest means that the survivors will be harder to kill, bashing them as soon as they can be identified is not only fun, but also reasonable.

[QUOTE=__HRB__;174664]No. It depends on counting flies and applying a comparison operator.



Please do not confuse literacy with pedantry.[/QUOTE]Indeed. An adequate level of literacy would have unambiguously determined the referent of "it" in my statement. As you appear to have problems with literacy, let me attempt to be clearer.


The choice of a fly for a scent, when two or more scents are in the air, goes with the type of fly and with what it likes to eat.


There, monosyllabic. Does that help?


Paul

[quote=xilman;174674]Indeed. An adequate level of literacy would have unambiguously determined the referent of "it" in my statement. As you appear to have problems with literacy, let me attempt to be clearer.


The choice of a fly for a scent, when two or more scents are in the air, goes with the type of fly and with what it likes to eat.


There, monosyllabic. Does that help?


Paul[/quote]

Not really, because you are providing the answer to the wrong question, i.e: "Given the choice between honey and vinegar, where will a fly go?".

Your problem is [U]functional[/U] illiteracy.

EDIT:

For clarification:

From the statement: "You can abduct more children with candy than with brussel sprouts", it does [U]not[/U] follow that "You can abduct a child more easily with candy than with brussel sprouts".

In case you forgot what this is about:

[quote=Uncwilly;174652]You can catch more flies with honey.....[/quote]

[QUOTE=__HRB__;174675]Not really, because you are providing the answer to the wrong question, i.e: "Given the choice between honey and vinegar, where will a fly go?".

Your problem is [U]functional[/U] illiteracy.

EDIT:

For clarification:

From the statement: "You can abduct more children with candy than with brussel sprouts", it does [U]not[/U] follow that "You can abduct a child more easily with candy than with brussel sprouts".

In case you forgot what this is about:[/QUOTE]The quote was that one can catch more flies with one attractant than with another. I, quite correctly, pointed out that the truth of that statement depends on the type of fly.

You have not yet shown that in a given locality at a given time, or that for a time-weighted global average distribution, that more flies are attracted to vinegar than are attracted to honey. I don't deny that that may be the case under certain circumstances, but I don't need to prove that it is the case under all circumstances for my claim to be correct. I need only to show that it holds under at least one circumstance.

Your turn.


Paul

[QUOTE=__HRB__;174673]
According to [URL]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housefly[/URL] they are poop-eaters, but as honey tends to be very low in poop-content, my first guess would be that if this works at all, the honey is approximately 1% lure and 99% trap.[/QUOTE]A selective (and bowdlerized) quotation from the article. The Wikipedia entry actually states:
[quote=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housefly]Within a day, larvae (maggots) hatch from the eggs; they live and feed in (usually dead and decaying) organic material, such as garbage or faeces.[/quote]

In my experience, they tend to lay their eggs on many different types of foodstuff, including meat intended for our cats --- much to the distaste of the cats.

Paul

[quote=xilman;174685]The quote was that one can catch more flies with one attractant than with another. I, quite correctly, pointed out that the truth of that statement depends on the type of fly.[/quote]

No, it depends on whether the median fly is found in the honey or the vinegar. Knowing that there are several types of flies with different preferences does not provide any information about the median.

There is no way to determine the validity of the statement without getting your hands dirty by collecting actual data. Over the years I've performed the experiment several times, and vinegar always outperformed honey by wide margins.

A possible explanation could be that because the acetic acid molecule is smaller and more volatile compared to the fragrances in honey, you simply get more moles into the air faster traveling farther and therefore attract more flies.

BTW, if the expression is taken really, really literally, you *can* even catch flies with a sealed container if you are willing to wait long enough for a fly to tunnel through the seal, which does not depend on the type of fly either.

Forced checkmate in three posts. Your turn.

EDIT: Not only is there very little poop in honey, there is also very little cat-food in honey.
EDIT 2: changed "will go for the honey or the vinegar" to "is found in the honey or the vinegar".

[QUOTE=__HRB__;174694]BTW, if the expression is taken really, really literally, you *can* even catch flies with a sealed container if you are willing to wait long enough for a fly to tunnel through the seal, which does not depend on the type of fly either.[/QUOTE]

Not really. First, with overwhelming probability, by the time a fly would tunnel though the container would aloready be destroyed -- quantum processes alone would suffice, and normal environmental exposure long before that. But even if that doesn't happen (say, the container is repaired at regular intervals), the tunneling probability is strongly dependent on the type of fly: less-massive flies are far more likely to tunnel.