Flies Track Smell Without Gradient

New YorkTurbulent air breaks smell into scattered filaments, not a slope.

Rockefeller University researchers found fruit flies track an odor plume’s edge using memory of encounter timing, not concentration, reversing the textbook “surge and cast” model.

The same encounter-statistics logic could improve gas-leak and wildfire-source drone tracking, the team says.

Sources: Ars Technica