Observed arrival · 2026-09-13
FLYFARM Raises a Fruit-Fly Brain
An interactive simulation lets visitors care for a virtual fruit fly whose nervous system is based on a traced male Drosophila connectome.
Field notes
The simulation separates measured anatomy from project-authored behavior, presenting a fly with 892 visual hex columns, 2,635 olfactory receptor neurons, and four named descending motor neurons. Its learning rule is deliberately counterintuitive: GOOD and BAD actions reduce selected synaptic weights, while unused weights drift back toward their initial values. The page identifies the source connectome as a CC-BY dataset from HHMI Janelia FlyEM, the Cambridge Connectomics Group, and Google Research.
Observed signals
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Editorial observations of this landing page, not a rating.
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