Posted on 02/23/2013 10:10:04 PM PST by nickcarraway
Many a mom has reached for a glass of wine after a long day of tending children. But only fruit fly moms use their version of Chardonnay to guard their babies from harm.
When fly moms see marauding wasps, they seek out the alcohol in fermenting fruit, and lay their eggs there, according to new research. The alcohol is toxic to the wasps, but not to the fruit flies. They've evolved a tolerance for hooch.
No only do the fruit flies babyproof with alcohol, when given a choice they'll pick just the right proof — about 3 percent. That's considerably less than the 12 to 14 percent in a glass of wine, but evidently enough to do in those lightweight wasps.
This news comes from Todd Schlenke, an evolutionary geneticist at Emory University who is making a bit of a specialty of studying the relationship between fruit flies and booze. His study was published in the journal Science.
A year ago, he reported that fruit-fly larvae will self-medicate with alcohol if they've been attacked by a wasp. The wasps lay eggs in the flies, and the alcohol kills the wasp larvae, saving the fly's life.
But some wasps are learning how to hold their liquor, Schlenke says, and the fruit flies may need to turn to more potent drink or figure out another survival strategy.
"It's sort of an arms race, I think," Schlenke says. "The flies do something to avoid being infected, and the wasps learn how to get around it."
Anthropomorphizing can be slippery, but it's hard not to feel a certain sympathy for these lowly fruit flies, whose drinking habits seem to echo ours in so many ways. For instance, it looks like fruit flies also turn to the bottle to nurse heartache. When a male fruit fly fails to mate with a female, he'll be more likely to start slugging down ethanol than the guy who scored, according to a study last year.
So why spend so much time hanging out with these "bar" flies? Schlenke studies the tiny flies to learn about big things like memory, heredity, and evolution.
For example, the mother fruit fly's ability to spot dangerous wasps is so refined that she'll only head for liquor when they see a female parasitic wasp (the males pose no threat to the young). "They only have to see the wasp once, and they remember," Schlenke says.
And even though the fruit flies have been living in the laboratory for many, many generations, they have no problem recognizing the danger posed by a wasp the moment they see it.
Ah, science!
Schlenke's revelations on the drinking habits of fruit flies have not only landed him in prestigious journals like Science, they've earned him a hat-tip from the satirical newspaper The Onion, which quipped, "I'm sure at least some of those flies also drink because of their crippling depression."
"Honestly, I think maybe The Onion is the highlight of my career," Schlenke told The Salt.
We bet the fruit flies will drink to that.
Time flies like an arrow, but fruit flies like a banana.
Groucho Marx
And even though the fruit flies have been living in the laboratory for many, many generations, they have no problem recognizing the danger posed by a wasp the moment they see it.
Maybe they were “designed” to recognize the female wasp by “Someone.”
Small journalistic gaffe, here. Alcohol Proof is about 2x the percent of alcohol (in the US).
“The term was originally used in the United Kingdom and was defined as 7/4 times the alcohol by volume (ABV). The UK now uses the ABV standard instead of alcohol proof. In the United States, alcoholic proof is defined as twice the percentage of ABV.
“The term originated in the 18th century, when payments to British sailors included rations of rum. To ensure that the rum had not been watered down, it was “proved” by dousing gunpowder with it and then testing to see if the gunpowder would ignite. If it did not, then the rum contained too much water and was considered to be “under proof”. Gunpowder would not burn in rum that contained less than approximately 57.15% ABV. Therefore, rum that contained this percentage of alcohol was defined to have “100° (one hundred degrees) proof”.
I solved my fruit fly problem in the summer by letting my mustache grow thick so I can strain the fruit flies out of my wine when I take a sip or gulp.
That’s an interesting explanation of “proof”, but something tells me that the idea of sailors getting cheated would not motivate people to come up with an idea for testing the alcohol ratio. After all, the poor sailors were treated pretty badly all around.
I did a search and found an article. It’s from the WaPo — yeah, I know — but this explanation sounds more plausible:
These days, most drinkers don’t have much experience with high-proof spirits. In the 18th century, proof was much more straightforward. Liquor was “proofed” at the distillery by adding gunpowder and lighting it on fire. If it didn’t light, the alcohol content was too weak. If it burned yellow, too strong. If it burned blue, the proof was just right (that was around 57 percent, or 114 proof). A century ago, our federal government established a standard that quality spirits were “bonded” at 100 proof, or 50 percent alcohol. You still see the word bonded on certain 100-proof bottles of old brands such as Rittenhouse Rye or Laird’s Straight Apple Brandy, but the term doesn’t really carry much weigh any longer. Over time, federal and state excise taxes on higher-proof spirits drove down the average proof, as did health concerns and consumer preference. Jack Daniel’s whiskey, for instance, dropped from 90 proof to 80 proof in 2004.
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