Drunken, Horny, Fruit Flies...

Are people too...

Well, not really.  They are simply, drunken, horny fruit flies.  This used to be the kind of thing you could look up in one of the books of the Encyclopedia Britannica with the high end binding that your parents bought in 48 easy installments--the volumes that would be your direct ticket to the Ivy league and an invitation to the Mensa picnic.  How did that work out for you?  

actual encyclopedias suitable for doorstops

Apparently the folks at the old Britannica have decided to no longer bother with actually publishing their font of knowledge and will thank you very much to visit them "on line" the next time you need to fill your gourd with new and exciting information.

The good news is that seems to be no end to those ever popular think tank and university professors  churning out fascinating studies that will keep us chock-full of facts about things like alcoholic fruit flies.

Uh...where was I?  Oh yeah, alcoholic fruit flies.

According to yet another of those certainly tax payer financed studies, researchers have determined that male fruit flies, when filled with UNfulfilled desire, tend to get hammered.  Imagine!  Fruit flies apparently self-medicate just like humans, drowning their sorrows or frustrations in the sweet solace of "genuine rectified bust-head".  

"shot down" fruit fly seeks comfort in a cocktail

Here is what the Poindexters at the University of California San Francisco recently discovered:  One group of male flies who were allowed to mate freely with available virgin females did not need alcohol.  Another group of male flies allowed to mingle with females who had already mated and were indifferent became depressed and showed a marked preference for an alcoholic mixture thoughtfully provided by researchers.  (There is no evidence that the sad flies were allowed to run a tab.)

self medicating male human

"It's the first time we have shown this link between a social experience that involves reward and a drug -related behavior," said Ulrike Heberlein, a neuroscientist at the university and co-author of the paper.

Not that old Ulrike or any of the rest of the scientists involved in this important study care, but here is my take: NO SH#%T SHERLOCK!!  I sincerely hope you didn't spend too much of our money finding this out.  Is it really that big a surprise that a depressed fly or human may gravitate toward having a couple of jolts from the old juice jar?  Come on man!  Here's something to ponder the next time you take a break from getting these poor hapless male fruit flies loaded.  How about brewing up a little wobble water for those not so virgin females just to make them a little more frisky.  You know... get them "down to clown" with the lonely boys.  It seems to me that would be what you guys call a "win win" for us all.  Then maybe you could get busy trying to determine if indeed the hokey pokey really is what it's ALL about.  (Just make sure you use up those tax payer dollars.)

The Lord helps those who help themselves