UCSF / AP
When she says no, the bottle beckons more brightly — for men and for fruit flies, according to a new study that found that male flies that had been repeatedly spurned by females were more likely to turn to alcohol to self-medicate their frustration.
As a topic of study, drunk fruit flies may seem trifling, but what the findings reveal about the neurochemistry that drives behaviors like sex and eating may point the way to new drugs to fight both addiction and obesity.
Researchers performed several clever experiments to determine the relationship between sexual frustration and drinking in male flies. Some lucky males were allowed four days of mating for six-hour sessions at a time (each bout of fruit fly copulation takes 20 minutes) with an abundance of sexually receptive females — the female-to-male ratio was a satisfying 5-to-1. The male flies were housed either together or alone./.../
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