Wine-fly conundrum enough to drive me to drink some more

HERE’S one of life’s little puzzles: Where do wine flies go between drinks? There’s another question I’d like to have answered. Do teetotal homes also have wine flies and, if so, what do they drink? I am fascinated by these tiny creatures. I never see one at lunch time or tea time. They never crawl about on window panes like regular flies. They don’t sit on food or buzz about my head annoyingly when I’m trying to doze.

But all I need do is pour myself a glass of wine and at least two of them will arrive from nowhere, dive in and swim about. They don’t take any interest in fruit juices or fizzy cool drinks. It seems to be only wine that attracts them. They’re quite resilient creatures, too. The other evening I carefully rescued one from a glass of Pinotage and placed it on a newspaper page beside me, where it lay, apparently dead, for a minute or two. After a while it began to revive, shook its wings a few times to remove excess wine and took off rather shakily, heading for the secret dimension in which wine flies exist. I bet it had the mother of all hangovers the next morning.

Not being an entomologist, I have no idea what their scientific name is and I do not own a microscope, so I have not studied them in any great detail. Also, when I have settled down for my evening glass of wine, I do not want my pleasure to be interrupted by having to conduct a scientific experiment.

I suspect they may be relatives of the fruit flies that so often seem to feature in genetic studies. I believe scientists use fruit flies because they have a short lifespan and so can produce several generations quite quickly.

I guess this enables the boffins to come up with those amazing discoveries that so often feature in magazines – “Left-handedness in fruit flies occurs only once in every six generations. Genetic researchers have found a way to turn second-generation fruit flies into right-handed insects by altering their DNA sequences…”

I always enjoy reading those articles and then spend sleepless nights trying to work out how a scientist finds out whether a fruit fly is left or right-handed.

Another insect-related question that intrigues me is whether flies can fly upside down, and if not, how do they land on the ceiling?

Do they reach up over one shoulder and grab onto the ceiling and then swing up the other five legs. Or do they do a barrel-roll close to the ceiling and grab on with all six hands? Maybe they fly vertically until the two front feet can reach the roof, then swing up the other four.

Small problems are the difficult ones to solve. Big problems like the rand exchange rate, the crime figures and corrupt politicians are easy to solve. Just spend an evening in your local pub and after a few drinks everybody will tell you how to solve them.

Last Laugh

The plane was delayed for almost an hour before taking off. During the flight one angry passenger asked the cabin attendant what had caused the delay.

“The pilot heard a strange noise coming from one of the engines and refused to take off,” said the stewardess.

“It took us almost an hour to find a different pilot.”