Thursday, June 5, 2008 | Reason : In the News | print version

Stupid flies live longer: study

by Yahoo News

Thanks to Norbert Burghart for the link.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080604/od_afp/switzerlandscienceanimal

Stupid flies live longer: study

GENEVA (AFP) - It doesn't pay to be smart and ignorance really is bliss if you want a long life -- at least if you're a fly, according to new research by a Swiss university.

Scientists Tadeusz Kawecki and Joep Burger at the University of Lausanne said Wednesday they had discovered a "negative correlation between an improvement in a fly's mental capacity and its longevity".

As part of their research project, the results of which are published in the journal Evolution, they divided into two a group of flies from the Basel region of northwestern Switzerland.

One half was left in a natural state while the other had its intelligence boosted by Pavlovian methods, such as associating smell and taste with particular food or experiences.

Over 30 to 40 generations, these methods led to flies which clearly learned better and remembered things for longer.

The flipside was that the flies left in their natural state lived longer on average than their "cleverer" counterparts, with a lifespan of 80-85 days rather than the normal 50-60..

"In other terms, the more the fly becomes intelligent, the shorter its lifespan," the scientists said.

This is most probably because the increase in neural activity weakens the fly's life-support systems, they speculated.

"This would explain why flies, like most other animals, have hardly developed their neural capacities," they said.

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1. Comment #189072 by JLD Calgary on June 5, 2008 at 11:06 am

Any information on their birth rates? Reference: The movie Idiocracy (Very funny movie if anyone hasn't seen it, where the dumb shall inherit the Earth)

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2. Comment #189076 by mordacious1 on June 5, 2008 at 11:19 am

I dunno. The smart flies in my house tend to live up to 5 minutes longer while I chase them around. One was so clever at escaping me, that I finally captured it in a net and let it go, out of respect for its abilities.

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3. Comment #189079 by black wolf on June 5, 2008 at 11:23 am

How much offspring does Jeff Goldblum have, and how intelligent is he? Which Pavlovian method led him to select Geena Davis?
Gee, this article doesn't answer any important questions.

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4. Comment #189082 by Abhishek on June 5, 2008 at 11:27 am

One was so clever at escaping me, that I finally captured it in a net and let it go, out of respect for its abilities.

hahaha

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5. Comment #189088 by prettygoodformonkeys on June 5, 2008 at 11:44 am

This sheds some light on why the fundies are out-reproducing us..........

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6. Comment #189089 by Ansu on June 5, 2008 at 11:57 am

I dunno. The smart flies in my house tend to live up to 5 minutes longer while I chase them around. One was so clever at escaping me, that I finally captured it in a net and let it go, out of respect for its abilities.

Its smarter than you thought. It evolved to take advantage of your pity for them.

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7. Comment #189092 by Geodesic17 on June 5, 2008 at 12:19 pm

This sheds some light on why the fundies are out-reproducing us..........

Have you seen the movie Idiocracy?

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8. Comment #189097 by notsobad on June 5, 2008 at 12:43 pm

This is most probably because the increase in neural activity weakens the fly's life-support systems, they speculated.

"This would explain why flies, like most other animals, have hardly developed their neural capacities," they said.

DUH!
They didn't evolve bigger brains because there was no pay off.

Idiocracy intro for those who wonder: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upyewL0oaWA

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9. Comment #189192 by Barbara on June 5, 2008 at 5:58 pm

black wolf wrote:

Gee, this article doesn't answer any important questions.

Sure, it does! Now we know why humans don't live to be 900 years old like those goat herders we've heard so much about used to do.

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10. Comment #189218 by SamKiddoGordon on June 5, 2008 at 8:40 pm

I will make no apologies, I have 5 kids, and I think I am smarter than the average bear. But they are hard work, which may drive me to an early grave. What are all you people doing? Gotta pass on the good genes guys. LOL

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11. Comment #189239 by Christopher Davis on June 5, 2008 at 10:19 pm

SamKiddoGordon,

I'm waiting on my Geena Davis.

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12. Comment #189292 by HitbLade on June 6, 2008 at 12:56 am

So, is that the reason I eat lots of food, but never get fat? cus my brain burns it all?

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13. Comment #189325 by hungarianelephant on June 6, 2008 at 3:30 am

Is this news? I thought it was well known that larger and more active brains required more overhead. That's hardly going to increase the lifespan, though it might provide an evolutionary advantage in marginal environments.

Christopher Davis, you'll have to fight me out of the way first.

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14. Comment #189356 by jeremynel on June 6, 2008 at 5:46 am

One half was left in a natural state while the other had its intelligence boosted by Pavlovian methods, such as associating smell and taste with particular food or experiences.

Over 30 to 40 generations, these methods led to flies which clearly learned better and remembered things for longer.

No doubt this is due to a deficiency in the reporting, but the above quote puts the flies' increased intelligence down to Lamarkian evolution!

Does anyone know how the one group of flies actually became more intelligent?

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15. Comment #189359 by somersetsimon on June 6, 2008 at 5:57 am

One half was left in a natural state while the other had its intelligence boosted by Pavlovian methods, such as associating smell and taste with particular food or experiences. Over 30 to 40 generations, these methods led to flies which clearly learned better and remembered things for longer.

No doubt this is due to a deficiency in the reporting, but the above quote puts the flies' increased intelligence down to Lamarkian evolution!

Does anyone know how the one group of flies actually became more intelligent?

It looks like a poor grasp of the subject by the reporter. The quote certainly does appear imply a Lamarckian model of evolution. I suspect the truth was that the 'Pavlovian' tests were simply used to identify the more intelligent members of the population so they could be selected for breeding.

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16. Comment #189404 by Steven Mading on June 6, 2008 at 7:56 am

jeremynel, it's not Lamarkian evolution unless they are claiming that the memes get inherited biologically. They're merely claiming that the flies became more intelligent based on the notion that the brains were bigger, which is claiming biological inheritance of mental capacity, not inheritance of learned memes.

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17. Comment #189414 by Clintspark on June 6, 2008 at 8:24 am

Huh, what a report. It may be that the actual paper was worth something besides an Ig-nobel prize, but the news reporter at least totally failed to convey any of it.
Talking about intelligence in connection with flies is rather, well, stupid. As far as anyone can tell, a fly doesn't much cogitate or plan ahead or make emotional connections between memories, or any other thing generally associated with the word "intelligence." In terms of intellectual capacity, a fly would probably be best described as a sophisticated automat. It's got the neural systems it needs to do what flies do, and any extra processing capacity would be just a burden.
For more complicated animals the reverse may be true. Added brain capacity may increase, for example, a rodent's ability to adapt to a changing environment - in which case smarter rats would live longer on average.
A fly doesn't need to be smart. It would probably have to change to quite another animal altogether to benefit from a smarter brain.
Interestingly, humans with their big brains are among the longest-living vertebrates. That must be a statistical error, now that it's been proved in a lab that being stupid helps live longer.
Live smart, die young, leave a famous corpse?

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18. Comment #189415 by jeremynel on June 6, 2008 at 8:25 am

Thanks somersetsimon, I think you're probably right.

Steven, I didn't mean to imply that I thought they were inheriting memes - or anything similar. What I was questioning was how learning acquired by Pavlovian tests leads to increased mental capacity in the flies' descendants. It clearly doesn't, of course. Somersetsimon has nicely rectified the rather dismal reporting, I think. Apologies if I didn't phrase things well enough.

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19. Comment #189420 by sctparker on June 6, 2008 at 8:43 am

Of course, it's a balancing act. Humans live longer than other primates because we evolved the mental capacity to fiddle with our environment, and in fact start to direct our evolution and that of other species.

Were it not for increasing smarts, the homo branch would've been short-lived indeed.

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20. Comment #189451 by Crystal on June 6, 2008 at 10:00 am

We should all follow the example set by the flies.

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21. Comment #189477 by tieInterceptor on June 6, 2008 at 10:34 am

Reference: The movie Idiocracy (Very funny movie if anyone hasn't seen it, where the dumb shall inherit the Earth)

that film was so bad... the only good thing is the intro that you refer to,, and you can find that in youtube,

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=upyewL0oaWA

no need to watch the entire 84 min ... watch the first 10, and pull the plug.

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22. Comment #189525 by Simonw on June 6, 2008 at 12:15 pm

Only a handful of species seem to have plumped for intelligence as their niche.

Of those only our own has differentiated itself from the other species by developing such a sophisticated culture (at least with creating physical representations of that culture). Note many human like species are already extinct, at least one of which (Homo Erectus) had larger cranial capacity.

I'd have thought flies were a key example where less is more, since having a brain, and flying it around, must be even more energy intensive than say floating it around inside a whale.

On the other hand it is worth pondering how intelligent we are as a species. If IQ measures intelligence, then I'm fairly unusual, but it didn't stop me putting the cheese in the cupboard instead of the fridge a couple of days ago. So on finding stored food I'm only slightly outperforming the local squirrels (who admittedly are surprising clever, although they fall down on road crossing ability).

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23. Comment #189567 by Border Collie on June 6, 2008 at 2:06 pm

Bad news, I guess the fundamentalists are going to out live us.

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24. Comment #189570 by ebugogo on June 6, 2008 at 2:09 pm

I'm with tieInterceptor. It got boring after the first 10 or so.

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25. Comment #189581 by Ascaphus on June 6, 2008 at 2:45 pm

Why should natural selection favor long life in a fly, or any animal for that matter? Even in humans, natural selection favors a superior ability to make it to reproductive age, then maximize that opportunity. _We_ may value a long life, and use a significant part of our intelligence to increase the span, but this is not a boost of natural selection in any sense.

Matt

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26. Comment #189604 by thewhitepearl on June 6, 2008 at 4:03 pm

I love whenever they come out with the results of a new study they always start the article with a thought that's outside mainstream idealogy and then end the opening thought with "at least if your a (insert test subject here)"

Every single time

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