The Forever Fly, The Forever Diet?
Friday, April 15, 2011 - 20:50
in Earth & Climate
“You have to bump the cage harder. Like this.” Marta Santos took the plastic cage from my hands and smacked it with the palm of her hand, causing a few lifeless bodies to fall off the walls of the cube and collect on the floor. It was like kicking a vending machine so that the Snickers bar would drop into the compartment below. I took the cage back and, following suit, smacked it a few times, then watched the living fruit flies, or Drosophila melanogaster, whiz frantically around the confines of their plastic home, disturbed. I used a paintbrush to collect the dead and place them into a small plastic cap on the floor of the cage. They had, by experimental design, starved to death. read more