This teenager did a study with fruit flies, red wine and green tea. The fruit flies given green tea lived longer. The fruit flies given red wine had more offspring! (red wine fly sex!!) Fruit flies held as controls had average lifespan and offspring.
I wonder what kind of music they would listen to as they sip their wine? Red meat? Candles or lights down low? Or just “down and dirty fly sex”?
Did the green tea flies feel more righteous that they lived healthier, longer lives?
Did the flies that got wine live shorter lives? Or average lives? Did they, in essence, put more energy into offspring rather than living longer, or were the extra progeny a net gain?
I want to know if I should lay off the wine.
I have cultured fruit flies for years to feed to pet frogs. I would often create what I felt to be identical cultures (often made 4 or 6 of them at a time), and would get inconsistent results. 6 cultures are not enough to prove ANYTHING (two wine, two tea, two normal). If one of them got slightly more light, that would explain the higher fertility. Just placing them next to each other on a shelf can cause variations big enough to warrant a change. If one of them got less heat, that would explain the longer lives and lower reproduction. Again, keeping them right next to each other does not necessarily guarantee exactly the same conditions, and by my experience, very unnoticable changes do matter.
While I do applaud the premise of the test, I do not feel anything can be learned from such a small sample. I no longer keep frogs, because I got sick and tired of tending the fly cultures, actually, or I would try to reproduce the results myself. A single culture only lasts about a month to 6 weeks.