{"id":34,"date":"2002-09-20T22:30:10","date_gmt":"2002-09-20T22:30:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/?p=34"},"modified":"2002-09-20T22:30:10","modified_gmt":"2002-09-20T22:30:10","slug":"and-thats-why-theyre-called-fruit-flies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/2002\/09\/20\/and-thats-why-theyre-called-fruit-flies\/","title":{"rendered":"And That’s Why They’re Called Fruit Flies"},"content":{"rendered":"

I came across this article<\/a> in today’s Japan Times (pulled from the UPI wire). Scientists have apparently found that heat can change the sexual preference of genetically modified fruit flies. The story was only mildly interesting until I got to this part:<\/p>\n

The male fruit flies also lined up in circles and chains resembling a conga dance<\/b> and, on occasion, even reciprocated other male’s sexual advances with attempted copulation. Males apparently rejected unwanted suitors with a flick of their wings or a kick to the courting male’s head<\/b>.
\nThe flies reverted to their original heterosexual behavior when temperatures cooled down.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Comparing the original UPI headline (“Heat change makes mutant flies gay”) with the one the Japan Times came up with (“Flipping the switch of sexual preference”) shows the value of a good headline writer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I came across this article in today’s Japan Times (pulled from the UPI wire). Scientists have apparently found that heat can change the sexual preference of genetically modified fruit flies. The story was only mildly interesting until I got to this part: The male fruit flies also lined up in circles and chains resembling a… Continue reading And That’s Why They’re Called Fruit Flies<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ramblings"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5heLP-y","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}