the shortage in fruit flies ~ April 2, 2010

The article that I chose to write on this week is one in The New York Times. Olivia Judson wrote an article in the opinion section entitled “Laboratory Life” in which she describes how evolution never stops. She starts off by giving the scenario of a fruit fly being swept up by a scientist and put into a bottle. Then she goes on to describe how the life of this fly is significantly changed. The first way that their life is change is the life expectancy of the fruit fly. In the wild, a fly’s average life consists of around 80 days; however after being swept up into a bottle for research, the fly is only expected to live five or six days. Also they are expected to mate with a particular female or male fly instead of choosing their own partner. With those factors and the fact that the food is different, the species will most likely be traumatizing to the animal. The difference of a true wild fly and ones that have grown up in a lab are that they can only live up to a couple days after being released back into the wild after testing. This particular strand of fruit flies will eventually not be able to survive on its own if the scientists keep taking the flies at a rate that they are right now. However, I think this world can live with a few less flies bugging us all.
If it weren’t flies however, more people would get involved in trying to save these animals from the horrid scientists. In reality though, these scientists could be saving us and we don’t even know it. I think that if a scientist has probable cause to test on animals that it should be ok to do so.


Thats all for now
~Ali