topics: |  zoology | fly | behaviour

Vincent Dethier was a biologist who worked at John Hopkins, Princeton, and
at U. Mass.  He was also an accomplished recorder musician, and had a great
sense of humour, which shines through in this book.

Excerpts

Later we did get air-conditioning because on hot, humid days the flies
in our laboratory culture died like flies. While a prostrate stenographer
evoked no compassion, a cage full of dead flies constituted a powerful
argument for air-conditioning in the eyes of the administration.
	- p. 9

[Liver is needed as fly food]. It costs more to process a purchase
order through proper channels than the liver itself costs.
	- p. 16

   A gentleman was extricated from the rubble of an apartment immediately
after an earthquake. "Do you know what happened?" his rescuers inquired.
   "I am not certain," replied the survivor. "I remember pulling down the
window shade and it caused the whole building to collapse."
	- p.21

The stronger the [sugar] solution was, the more the fly took. Strangely
enough, the fly has no mechanism for regulating its calores.
	- p.40

Given a choice of glucose or fucose [a rare sugar], flies gorge themselves
on fucose and slowly starve to death even though there is a more than
adequate supply of glucose a mere inch away.
Here is an example par excellence of eating being a matter of taste.
	- p.41

The tsetse fly, which feeds exclusively on blood, is almost immediately
killed by a drink of water.  - p.63

Dethier also does some of the illustrations.