Scientists From the University of Leipzig they say they have demonstrated for the first time a behavior similar to the game in flies, discovering that they visited and repeatedly a uncle.
“Until now, the behavior similar to the game had been described mainly in vertebrates,” says Professor Wolf Huethteroth, who directed the study at the Institute of Biology of the University of Leipzig and recently moved to the University of Northumbria in Newcastle, England , as an associate professor. He and his colleagues have just published their findings in Current Biology magazine.
The behavior similar to the flies described by the researchers, which implies voluntary passive movements such as balance, sliding or turning, has now been demonstrated for the first time in insects. “This could help us discover how humans also develop an efficient self -consciousness of our body,” explains Huetteroth in a statement.
In collaboration with the University of Northumbria, the researchers conducted a detailed analysis of how flies interacted with the ethyvive. While many flies avoided carousel, others visited him repeatedly and for long periods. When two carousels turned alternately, flies even actively continued stimulation.
The scientists placed a total of 190 individual fruit flies in a carousel enclosure, a glass dome of approximately one centimeter high, and then filmed them for 3 to 14 days. Flip positions in recordings were then automatically recognized and tracked by special software. Only a fraction of the generated data was included in the study.
“Using several carousels, we generate and analyze a total of about seven years of filming data,” says Dr. Tilman Triphan, the first author of the study.
This effort was necessary because, unlike most flies behavior experiments, researchers had to trust the voluntary behavior of insects. There was not enough space under the glass dome so that the flies would fly to the carousel.
“However, we were able to distinguish whether the flies had deliberately walked towards the uncle or if they had jumped over him. This allowed us to demonstrate that unplanned visits to the ethical were quite atypical for the flies they played, ”says Co -author Dr. Clara H. Ferreira, attached professor at the University of Northumbria.
According to Huetteroth, the findings will now allow a detailed investigation of the underlying genetic, neuronal and biochemical factors that influence the playful behavior of the fruit fly and the benefits that this has for playful creatures in general.