Cultured Fruit Flies
A Moment of Science

Cultured Fruit Flies

B2Upper-intermediateSeptember 25, 20262 min
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Cultured Fruit Flies

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Sentence 10 of 12 · 0:38

seen in some apes, whales, and birds in much smaller animals, like insects.

female fruit flies choose between artificially colored pink or green males.

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B2

B2 · Upper-intermediate

Comfortable if you already follow TV news

A1 33%A2 11%B1 33%B2 22%C1 0%
  • 78% of the words are B1 or easier.
  • 146 words a minute: a natural pace.
  • 13 harder words (B2 and up) in the whole episode.

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0:00

How did so many fruit flies get in here, Yael? Where there's a will, there's a way. Do fruit flies have wills? They definitely don't have any manners flying inside when I make it pretty clear they're

0:16

uninvited guests. Maybe not manners, but they do have culture, Don, or cultural traditions, which are socially learned behaviors that animals pass down across generations. A team of researchers wondered if we could observe the kinds of cultural traditions we've

0:33

seen in some apes, whales, and birds in much smaller animals, like insects. The researchers set up an experiment where observer female fruit flies observed demonstrator female fruit flies choose between artificially colored pink or green males. When the observers later chose mates of their own, over 70% of the time they chose a mate

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