Fembot Flies Reveal What Males Find Attractive

A word of advice to female fruit flies looking for a mate: it's not hard to catch the eye of a male Drosophila. He'll chase after almost anything that moves. Really—including a metal cube dabbed with pheromones. That may be embarrassing for the male, but it also shows scientists how a tiny-brained animal weighs information when making decisions. "We call the robot 'Flyatar,'" says University of Washington graduate student Sweta Agrawal, in reference to the movie Avatar. "It's a device that allows us to essentially 'become a fly' so we can interact with other flies and understand what they're doing." The robot she used to tempt male flies, though, was on the opposite end of the realism spectrum from that movie's motion-capture technology. Agrawal tested her flies in an arena with a circular track. The "Flyatar" was actually a small magnet, which Agrawal could remotely drive around the track at ...