Fruit flies, it turns out, aren’t just aimlessly flitting around. Scientists found they employ intentional movements to locate the source of a delicious smell.
Fruit flies have a hard time resisting a tasty banana. Now, scientists understand how they chart their course. Have you ever wondered how a fruit fly finds that rotting banana in your kitchen? Scientists at the University of Nevada at Reno have some answers.published Friday in the journal Current Biology revealed that fruit flies are actually employing intentional movements to search for the source of a delicious smell.
This behavior may not be shocking — most cartoon depictions of flies show them circling around a stinky mound of food. Yet, this is the first time scientists have documented how fruit flies behave in still air environments, confirming long-held human intuition.In still air, catching a scent indicates that the source is probably nearby, making a sink and circle approach more useful.
“If you stick your head out the window of a car while driving, can you tell if there’s any wind or not?” asked Floris van Breugel, principal investigator of the study and assistant professor of mechanical engineering. Detecting a gentle breeze while moving through the air is hard, but fruit flies excel at it anyway.The authors suggest that the flies slow down and turn when they encounter an odor to determine if there is wind and where it is coming from.
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