How cruel is this? Neuroscientist Ulrike Heberlein and her colleagues, bored, and in an apparently sadistic mood, put horny male fruit flies in a container with females who had just mated, and who therefore weren’t in the mood.
Not able to tell their prospective suitors that “they had headaches” or were feeling “bloated and unsexy,” the female flies simply ran away, kicked the guys, or stuck out their egg-laying organs to hold them at bay (that last one, especially, does sound like a turn off).
The scientists did this for four days straight, in three hour sessions, until the poor frustrated males turned to one of the same salves favored by their human counterparts: booze!
