It is no wonder why pesky fruit flies are nearly impossible to catch because once they feel threatened they can make precise turns and banks similar to how a fighter jet would.

According to BBC News, researchers have recorded these ultra-precise banks on a high-speed camera for analysis. The research team from the University of Washington (UW) published their study in the journal Science.

"They process this information so quickly, as anyone who has tried to swat a fly will have noticed," study co-author Michael Dickinson, a UW professor of Biology, told BBC News. "And they can fly like an ace at birth. It's like putting a newborn baby in the cockpit of a fighter aircraft and it knowing what to do."

To sense their predators, these rice-grain-sized fruit flies rely on a quick visual system and an ultra-fast cognitive reaction.

"The brain of the fly performs a very sophisticated calculation, in a very short amount of time, to determine where the danger lies and exactly how to bank for the best escape, doing something different if the threat is to the side, straight ahead or behind," Dickinson said in a press release. "How can such a small brain generate so many remarkable behaviors? A fly with a brain the size of a salt grain has the behavioral repertoire nearly as complex as a much larger animal such as a mouse. That's a super interesting problem from an engineering perspective."

Captured on three cameras capable of shooting 7,500 frames per second (40 frames for one wing beat), the researchers purposefully influenced the flies to sense danger mid-flight.

Since the cameras were snapping away so quickly, the researchers needed to flood the room with light, but figure out a way to maintain regular room light. Since neither humans nor flies can process infrared light, they used high amounts to illuminate the scene," Graham Taylor, an Oxford University professor performing a similar experiment, told BBC News. "What is so remarkable is the rapidity of the response, and the subtlety of the changes the flies make to their wing beat," he said.

"The flies start turning away from approaching threats in half the time it takes you to start blinking at a camera flash, and finish throttling up their flight motor in one-fiftieth of the time it takes you to complete the blink. It is little wonder we find them hard to swat."