Fruit Flies Force-Feed Their Children Alcohol
High Tolerance Mr.checker via Wikimedia Commons But it's to protect them! Humans have been using alcohol as a medicine since ancient times, using it as an antiseptic and a pain killer, among other things. We're not the only species that does so, apparently. According to biologists at Emory University, fruit flies force alcohol on their larvae to protect them from parasitic wasps. Common fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster) have adapted to be able to largely digest alcohol in their main food source, the rot on overripe and fermenting fruit. Fruit fly larvae been known to self-medicate, consuming high levels of alcohol in order to fight off endoparasitoid wasps, which lay eggs inside fruit flies that eventually hatch and eat their host from the inside out. The alcohol is still somewhat toxic for them, but the wasps, which don't have a tolerance for the toxic effects, are a bigger danger, so...