Fruit flies can cure themselves of intestinal parasites, with the power of alcohol

yield flies , the simple little things that bombinate around the yield you bank you ’d eat and the jack - type O - lantern you swore you ’d throw out , can diagnose themselves with enteral parasite — and imbibe alcohol until they ’re all well again .

Fruit flies really seem to have a bad time of it . They get perpetually experimented on in research lab , sprayed with every poisonous substance known to valet , encouraged to mutate , or expose to radiation . They get swat and consume in the wild . And even when nothing goes wrong , a rich , full life for the Drosophila melanogaster melanogaster consists of one month of eating dispose fruit .

That calendar month will be abbreviate awfully short if a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant gets to them . Wasps will lay their eggs inside a fly , or in a fly larvae . Those ballock will hatch , and the wasp larvae will eat the fly from the inside out . But the fly have happen a mode to foreclose their fate . It turns out that wasp larvae , being used to being laid in any hapless worm that a wasp come across , are punk drunk . yield flies , however , have spent generations eating whatever fruit is lie out in the sun . Fruit lying out in the sun ferment , so fruit tent-fly have a massive amount of alcohol in their diet . This alcohol is not in effect for wasp larva . But it ’s not a concurrence of diet that cures the fruit flies . Flies infected with the parasite will literally fly around looking for some ethanol , and then gulp down as much of it as they can . Eventually , they ’ll kill off the larvae within , and see some other food . The tent flap can instinctively ego - diagnose and drink themselves healthy again .

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