• Question: I found what u hat to say really inspiring and i would like to ask u why do u like flys so much r u studing then or something

    Asked by 2061gilmour11 to Clare, Mariana, Pedro, Robert, Susanne on 15 Nov 2012. This question was also asked by segei.
    • Photo: Robert Insall

      Robert Insall answered on 15 Nov 2012:

      Me, no. I study amoebas. Flies are wretched things, fit only for flypaper.

      Only joking Mariana :>

    • Photo: Susanne Muekusch

      Susanne Muekusch answered on 15 Nov 2012:

      Hi gilmour,

      Since Mariana changed her profile picture it is easy to tell who the fly lover is. 😉
      I study humans, brain cancer and neural stem cells. No flies.
      Recently, at a conference, I heard a talk about flies and I thought it was really interesting what tools you have at hand with flies. They are great model organisms to study lots of things.
      Your turn, Mariana, to explain why flies are so great!

    • Photo: Clare Taylor

      Clare Taylor answered on 15 Nov 2012:

      I don’t study flies or particularly like them! When I was filming Afterlife: The Strange Science of Decay last year, I had to spend hours inside a giant perspex box that was full of flies and maggots! There were literally thousands and thousands of flies! And they produced thousands and thousand of maggots! Ugh!!

    • Photo: Mariana Campos

      Mariana Campos answered on 16 Nov 2012:

      Thanks gilmour. It feels really to good to be able to inpire people 🙂
      I don’t like flies in general, I like the fruit flies. They have a fancy name: Drsosophila.
      Check it out here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drosophila_melanogaster.
      I work with flies, yes. I am really puzzled by how the organs in our body know what’s the right size. It really makes me confused how our left and our right hand have the same size, they are not attached to each other when we are babies, they are inside a mold, and still in the end they have the same size. How?!! I realized I could not do experiments with my own hands so I decided to use the fruit fly for my studies. And I look at their wings and try to understand how their left and right wing also reach the same size.
      In science, when you have a question you have to find the best method to answer and the best animal to study. I think, for this question, the fly is the best. What do you think?

Comments