# @science on Instagram

- **Type:** Image
- **Original URL:** https://www.instagram.com/p/DPZVAj2EyFp
- **Gondola URL:** https://gondola.cc/posts/35222615-science-instagram
- **Thumbnail:** https://img.gondola.cc/tr:w-,h-,fo-auto/postThumbnails/f5f0e20854.jpg
- **Posted:** 2025-10-04T17:30:23.000+00:00
- **Account Owner:** Science 🧬 (@science) — https://gondola.cc/science

## Caption

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.⁠
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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.⁠
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“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 in Science.⁠
It is important to discover that the same chemical could underlie the rewarding nature of both intercourse and alcohol, said Todd Thiele, a neurobiologist who studies alcoholism at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. The results fit in with the idea that alcohol co-opts or takes over the neural pathways that govern natural rewards, he explained: “an outcome that may lead to alcohol dependence.”⁠
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A similar signaling chemical, called neuropeptide Y (NPY), acts in the human brain, and studies are already underway to see whether NPY levels are linked to a preference for alcohol or addictive drugs.⁠
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#malefruitfly #fruitfly #flies #biology #science

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## Tags

science, fruitfly, flies, biology, malefruitfly

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