Yale University found that fruit flies can smell the movement of odors and use them to navigate

From wolves to bees, the survival of all animals and insects depends on their ability to find sources of odors, a challenge
when the wind disperses and masks the source of odors.
Past studies have shown that animals and insects navigate to these targets
by sensing the intensity of the odor and returning in the opposite direction of the wind.

However, simply following the wind can also lead them astray, for the same reason that smoke from the chimney dissipates and its trail does not always point directly to its source
.
A team of Yale scientists, led by Thierry Emonet and Damon Clark, wondered if there was a difference between the two antennae of fruit flies: Can they detect the movement of odor packs without being affected by the wind?

In a new study, Emonet and Clark's lab combined their expertise in olfactory navigation and motion detection to design experiments to test this hypothesis
.
They found that, in fact, the flies themselves could sense the direction in which the scent packets moved, not just the wind
.

To make this discovery, they genetically modified the flair's antennae to detect light, then used the light to create imaginary scent packs and observed how the flies responded
to these signals in both windless and windy environments.
They found that the fly's antennae worked together to identify the direction in which the scent packet was moving, allowing the fly to adjust its course
based solely on the signals sent by the scent packet.
The paper was published Nov.
9 in
the journal Nature.

The researchers say this knowledge will not only help agriculture (how bees find flowers) and public health (how mosquitoes find people), but it will also help develop robots
that can sense environmental hazards (where mines are buried).