One of the year’s strangest stories --- and space chewers --- to make some front pages over the weekend dealt with (ready for this?) sex life of fruit flies, observed Grumpy Editor.
It also indicated how University of California, San Francisco, researchers are spending valuable tax dollars in a financially-smacked state.
Fruit flies normally are attracted to ripened or fermenting fruits and vegetables. And spotting them shake up produce inspectors, especially in California.
Associated Press writer Malcolm Ritter gobbled up information based on material in Science magazine that involved a study of fruit flies that could shed light “on the biology of alcohol abuse.”
The story detailed how fruit flies were studied after being put into containers with a just-mated female. Then the rejected insects were placed in vials and given a choice of regular food or alcohol-laced chow. “They consistently went for the alcohol more than did the male flies that had just mated,” Ritter reported.
The story also cited researchers paired thousands of other male flies with dead virgin females, “so they didn’t experience rejection but didn’t have sex either.”
Wow!
With newspapers' editorial space getting tighter and considering readers’ increasing interest in the shaky economy, job creation, the conflict in Afghanistan, taxes being pushed, growing use of Air Force One for fund raising, the upcoming election and weird weather appearing around the country, how fruit flies made front pages --- or even the funny pages --- was simply weird.
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