A male fruit fly will try to court a female by nuzzling her genitals, tapping her abdomen, and singing with his wings. If all that fails, he drowns his sorrows in booze.⁠ ⁠ Researchers from the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Janelia Farm Research Center near Ashburn, Virginia, in 2012 found that male fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster) are more likely to choose to eat alcoholic food if females have sexually rejected them.⁠ The team shows that a neuropeptide F (NPF) signaling chemical in the fly's brain underpins this behavior. Males have low levels of NPF if they are denied sex, and this drives them to seek rewards for alcohol. Given extra NPF artificially, however, even a sex-starved male fly will turn away from the drink.⁠ ⁠ _____⁠ ⁠ “The work provides a molecular link between natural rewards like intercourse and drug rewards like alcohol,” says Ulrike Heberlein, a neurologist at UCSF who led the study, which is published i...