A new study looking at the behavior of fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster) in a 'virtual reality' setting offers up some clues – and it seems that conventional scientific wisdom on how vision and movement intertwine might be wrong.
The new experiments show that vision was used to prevent the flies from going off their intended course before it happened, rather than to get them back on track after they'd already deviated from a route – and that's a substantial difference.
...By treating the postural signals coming from elsewhere as less important when they could see where they were going, flies appeared to use their vision to preemptively keep their bodies on course. That suggests a very close link between sight and motor control.