The squirming larva of the humble fruit fly, which shares a
surprising amount of genetic material with the human being, is helping
scientists to understand the way we learn information from one another.
Fruit flies have long served as models for studying
behaviour because their cognitive mechanisms are parallel to humans’, but much
simpler to study.
Fruit flies exhibit many of the same basic behaviours as
humans and share 87 per cent of the material that is responsible for
genetically based neurological disorders, making them a potent model for study.