No so quick on the draw
There may be more to being quick on the draw than Wild West legend, research suggests.
In the movies, John Wayne and Clint Eastwood never lost a duel even when the other man went for his gun first.
Now scientists have found what is true for Hollywood gunslingers might also help the rest of us cope with day-to-day dangers such as crossing the road.
People move faster when they react to something than when they initiate an action themselves, a study shows.
The difference is only 21 milliseconds, but it could be enough to save your life.
In the classic Hollywood Wild West stand-off, the gunman with the itchiest trigger finger tends to end up dead.
The cowboy who goes for his gun second gets his shot off first.
In reality, no-one has reactions lightning fast enough to guarantee winning a real duel, John Wayne style, by waiting for their opponent to draw.
It would take the brain a lengthy 200 milliseconds to start the hand moving - and the delay could prove fatal. But once in motion, the hand moving second would travel faster, according to the research.
The mechanism, hard-wired into the brain, could be a primitive aid to surviving in a harsh environment, say the scientists.
Study leader Dr Andrew Welchman, from the University of Birmingham, said: "As a general strategy for survival, having this system in our brains that gives us quick-and-dirty responses to the environment seems pretty useful.
"Twenty-one milliseconds may seem like a tiny difference, and it probably wouldn't save you in a Wild West duel because your brain takes around 200 milliseconds to respond to what your opponent is doing, but it could mean the difference between life and death when you are trying to avoid an oncoming bus."
Dr Welchman set up "duels" between pairs of volunteers faced with a row of buttons. Each participant had to try to press the buttons faster than his or her opponent. However, there was no "go" signal.
The team found that participants who reacted to their opponent's movement completed the task on average 21 milliseconds faster than those who initiated the button pressing - but not as accurately.
So you might get the shot away first but you might hit someone else.
Weird Science Factoid: Albert Einstein never wore any socks. And from now on neither will I!
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Authors
Daniel Smith - a long time ago, in a galaxy far away just north of Watford, Daniel fancied himself as a scientist but turned out to be the worst scientist since that bloke who mapped out all those canals on Mars that turned out to be scratches on his telescope's lens. Luckily, he is now not working on the Large Hadron Collider inadvertently creating a black hole that would swallow the world but is safely behind a desk writing this blog, bringing you the fantastical underbelly of nature... weird science.
