If you’ve ever swatted a fly, it’s unlikely you wondered before or after the act, “Do flies feel pain?” Scientists think they do, in a sense.

And this fact might help a species that doesn’t sport wings — humans.

Australian researchers discovered that fruit flies that have lost a leg begin to behave as if they are suffering pain. Injured flies will jump frantically off surfaces that wouldn’t normally trigger their escape response.

This behavior shows the fly sensing and avoiding what it perceives as stimuli that can be dangerous. Researchers say it mimics a state of chronic pain.

It isn’t the exact equivalent of human pain. But it’s close.

The heightened escape response even occurred when scientists stimulated the opposite, healthy leg. That made scientists think the fly’s chronic pain response was tied to their central nervous system, not the site of the injury. This, too, is true in humans.

Researchers discovered that the injury triggered the death of cells in the fly’s nervous system that worked to keep the insect’s pain responses in check. They learned that if they kept these specialized cells alive, the flies did not develop this chronic pain-mimicking response.

The biological mechanisms involved in a fly’s chronic pain are similar to those seen in humans. Scientists think that compounds and proteins involved in producing the fruit fly’s response might someday be used to alleviate suffering in people.

Which, when you think about it, is pretty good work for an insect that tends to spend most of its time investigating the clump of bananas you forgot about on your kitchen counter.