7 flies · 3 pints · 1 champion
The Thirsty Fly
Pint Chug
Seven fruit fly brains at the bar of an Irish pub, racing to drain a pint. Malt drives their sugar taste neurons, hops drive the bitter ones, and every spike of the feeding motor neurons is a gulp.
Champion
Won the stout final by 0.63 s.
How the brain drinks
- Taste. From the bell: malt at 70 Hz into the sugar/water taste neurons (LB3), hops into the 65 bitter taste neurons. Lager 15 Hz, Red Ale 50 Hz, Stout 85 Hz.
- Gulp. Each spike of the feeding motor neurons MN10 and MNx01 swallows 0.45 ml, at most 18 ml per 100 ms. A pint is 568 ml. The finish time is interpolated inside the last 100 ms window.
- Bitter brakes. The bitter neurons inhibit the feeding circuit. In calibration, the same sugar drive gave about 21 feeding spikes per 100 ms alone and about 16, with more stalls, under heavy bitter input.
- Game-side. ml per spike, the swallow cap, the beers' malt and hop rates, the pub and the camera. Ties go to the earlier first gulp.
Fly brain video
The Thirsty Fly Pint Chug
Seven fly brains, one bar, three pints.
Mike, Steve, Corey, Ben, Jack, Chris and Ryan sit at the bar of The Thirsty Fly. Each one is the same complete FlyWire fruit fly brain, 138,639 spiking neurons, simulated with the Shiu et al. 2024 model. Nothing is trained. When the bell rings, the beer is on their mouthparts: malt drives the sugar taste neurons and hops drive the bitter taste neurons. Every spike of the feeding motor neurons is a gulp.
Lager first, then red ale, then stout, each more bitter than the last. Bitter input holds the feeding neurons back, so the hoppier the beer, the slower the pint. The four fastest go through, then the two fastest.
Round 1 · Lager (hops 15 Hz)
| Place | Fly | Pint time | Feeding spikes / 100 ms |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ryan ✓ | 4.30 s | 29.7 |
| 2 | Mike ✓ | 4.60 s | 27.9 |
| 3 | Chris ✓ | 4.61 s | 28.0 |
| 4 | Jack ✓ | 4.67 s | 27.1 |
| 5 | Ben | 4.80 s | 26.5 |
| 6 | Steve | 4.84 s | 26.2 |
| 7 | Corey | 4.90 s | 26.2 |
Semifinal · Red Ale (hops 50 Hz)
| Place | Fly | Pint time | Feeding spikes / 100 ms |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ryan ✓ | 5.26 s | 24.2 |
| 2 | Mike ✓ | 5.43 s | 23.1 |
| 3 | Chris | 5.74 s | 22.0 |
| 4 | Jack | 5.77 s | 22.1 |
The Final · Stout (hops 85 Hz)
| Place | Fly | Pint time | Feeding spikes / 100 ms |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ryan | 6.76 s | 18.9 |
| 2 | Mike | 7.39 s | 17.1 |
What is real and what is not. Every gulp is a feeding-neuron spike. The seven flies are the same connectome run one after another on the same simulated network, reset before each pint, so the differences between them are neural noise. The beers, the gulp size, the pub and the camera are game rules. No brain ran away.
Music, all CC0 via OpenGameArt (the monster-truck beds, one per round): "Fight for Better Future [Rock/Metal]" by nene (round 1), "Boss Battle #9 [Metal]" by nene (semifinal), "Devoted Guard" by vitalezzz (final).