I open to the inner depths of my being with courage and compassion


Thursday, October 11, 2007

Fruit Flies

This is sort of an odd and gross topic to blog about and I should be asleep, but once again I am amazed about...fruit flies! Where do they come from!? I just spotted one from out of no where and it got me thinking about this again...

I have a garbage can I keep on the porch outside the kitchen that anything that might attract fruit flies goes in. So I mostly don't see any in the house at all, but will see them swarming around the garbage can outside (which when it gets too out of hand or gross I'll spray with Raid). The times I do see them in the house are when I'm in the middle of cooking or eating - they just appear seemingly out of no where! They totally gross me out, but yet they amaze me!

A few months ago I was putting something in the frige and as I was shutting the door thought I saw a fruit fly in the frige. YUCK, so I searched and searched in the frige trying to find it and get it out and never did. I chalked it up to my imagination, or to being the one I saw a minute later hovering above the sink. But to comfort myself I went to the computer to see if I could find out at which temperatures fruit flies would die, hoping that the frige would be cold enough to do the trick if there was one in there. I never did find out, but on one site I came across, there was a Q&A section with these little known facts about the buggars:

Q: Is there anything unusual about fruit flies I might find interesting?

A: Fruit flies can metabolize alcohol fumes. Yes, FUMES. While they obviously can't lay eggs in a gas, they are able to "eat" the fumes to subsist.

A: Fruit flies can be addicted to crack cocaine. When "high", they groom obsessively, and walk sideways and backwards (which they never do naturally). Dead Easy did NOT conduct that research.

A: Fruit flies are the critter most used for genetic research worldwide.

A: Fruit flies learn some functions better without a head. Yes, that's right, decapitated.


...Again, disgusting, but amazing!



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