The size of a housefly's brain.

[answerbok]

Must be pretty small.. and yet it's got enough brainpower to eat, obviously.. procreate, Also to fly.. smarter than me there. Also got the reactions to outdodge my swatting, and enough personality to wind me up by keep landing on me and evading, So, how come all that mental smarts and agility with a brain the size of a fullstop?

[wildwood]

You've just described pretty much all that a fly is capable of. It is all innate behaviour and a fly has very limited learning capabilities. To do those things a fly does successfully to sustain the species you don't need many brain cells, which is pretty smart in itself.

If the Human species hadn't developed a complicated brain with imagination, we would have become extinct before 'coming out of the trees' because as an animal of our size we are very slow to move/react and inherently weak to fight of predators.

[KEJ2000]

I'm trying to think back to my university biology classes... the tiniest of nature's living organisms do not have "brains", they have something called "ganglion" which is a group of nerve cells doing some of the same things that a brain would do, but on a much smaller scale, and with a far fewer number of cells. Flys might have ganglion instead of a brain. It's been years since I studied this, so perhaps someone else can help me out here?

[robber1]

You are confusing instinct with brain power.For you to think that a fly has "intelligence",then you must also have a houseflys brain.