I couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried. Good grief, the National Institute of Health actually spent nearly a million dollars studying the mating habits of fruit flies.
According to Daily Finance, these researchers are planning on expanding their testing to other species of animals as well, which would mean even more government funding for more experiments. When our country is currently in a state of economic uncertainty, with over $16 trillion in debt, what good is it to know whether male fruit flies are attracted to older or younger females? This lousy demonstration of government spending shows how Washington is wasting nearly $1 million of taxpayer dollars.
Every time you turn around there are more instances of waste like this. It’s insane and it’s got to stop. But you know if Mitt Romney proposes cutting the NIH budget the Dems will scream that he’s anti-health.
@lonelycon Wow they can give me a million to study how housecleaning causes back pain LOL
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“The mating habits of fruit flies.” heh!
SELF-INDULGENT PERVERTS!
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I can see a legitimate reason for this line of research. I’m serious.
Fruit flies–Drosophila melanogaster–have been used in genetic research for a hundred years. Since they’re insects, we don’t mind much if genetic experiments produce bizarre mutations. A biologist at Harvard once told me that he considered fruit flies to be “like TinkerToys: You can mix up body parts to produce anything you want.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drosophila_melanogaster#Model_organism_in_genetics
The lessons learned from fruit flies can then be applied to other species. We may not care much how fruit flies choose their mates, but we should care how members of various insect pests choose their mates and whether we can find ways to affect that. The more picky they are, the less likely that species will reproduce–and the less they will bother us.
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Perfect graphic for the story.
@sinz54, I don’t doubt your conclusion that this is a legitimate line of research. The question is, should we be funding it when the nation is broke?
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