Why fruit flies seem to be smarter (Feb. 3)
By Chuck Doud
The Madera Tribune
You may have noticed that in this period of warm weather we’re having, fruit flies have been coming around.
One of them flew past my nose the other day. I made a grab for it, missed and managed to hit my glasses. I tried grabbing it in midair and even clapping it between my hands, to no avail. I began to feel like an idiot. “This fruit fly is smarter than I am,” I thought.
The only consolation I had was that if this was a smart fruit fly, it probably only had a few weeks to live, even if nobody ever successfully swatted it. The fly, if it were a college grad among fruit flies, likely would only live a total of 60 days.
Its dumber brothers and sisters, however, however, might live as long as three months.
Don’t ask me why two researchers in Switzerland bothered to figure this out a couple of years ago. They took a batch of fruit flies, divided the batch in half, sent one half to Fruit Fly University and kept the other half ignorant watching soap operas on TV. Then, the scientists sat around and waited to see what happened.
The classes at Fruit Fly University were designed to teach the flies how to associate smells with tastes such as sweet (read that to be fruit) and also to notice unpleasant tastes, smells and experiences.
The fruit flies that passed the classes then died about 20 days earlier than the ones that were kept home from school.
Getting back to the fruit fly that was buzzing around my nose, I wonder whether the scientists now are teaching fruit flies how to avoid being swatted. You would think that a fruit fly, which hardly ever gets out of second gear and wobbles a lot would be easy to swat. But no. I have yet to claim my first kill. The score is fruit flies 20 (or so), me zero. Not much to brag about.
Perhaps I can just learn to ignore them. If so, I may outsmart them after all.
