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Like this stuff? Get it delivered to your email inbox daily! Sign up below! I was in Amsterdam earlier this year, and because you go through security at the gate, my hosts advised that I get to the airport at least 3 hours early. Suffice it to say that I noticed the flies, below. It was not until a few day ago that I learned why they where there, and honestly, I would have never guessed. Makes sense (I guess), though. -- Dan\



A Fly on the Urinal

Fly into Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport and, if you do what most people do after a long flight, you are probably headed to the lavatory. If you're a guy, you'll see that Schiphol's bathrooms sports a feature many do not -- urinals, with flies on them, as pictured right. Stare for a minute and you'll notice that the fly doesn't move. Look around, and you'll note that the flies are everywhere -- one per urinal, all the way down the row.



The fly is a peel-and-paste decal, and it's not there for decoration or, even, to keep real flies away. It's a target, plain and simple. Something for customers to aim at as they urinate.



Professor Mary Berenbaum, head of the department of entomology (the study of insects) at the University of Illinois told NPR that apparently, men have "a deep-seated instinct to aim at targets". The fly decal fulfills that need, and men spend more of their attention making sure they hit the target, so to speak. Schilphol's manager claimed that "spillage" was down 80% once the flies were added. That, of course, saves a lot of money on bathroom maintenance costs.



And you don't have to save a lot of money to make it worthwhile. Fly decals are available online at reasonable prices -- $9.99 for a dozen or, if you run an airport and need the volume discount, $49.99 for 100. Have toddlers? The same company makes child-oriented targets as well, at the same prices.



Bonus fact : Airports and insects seem to go together quite often. Dusseldorf International Airport, in Germany, uses bees as a complement to their traditional methods of measuring air quality. Beekeepers collect honey from bees at and around airports, and turn it over to chemists who check the honey for instances of toxins.



