Questioning the existence of magnetic sensing in fruit flies
A replication study has cast doubt on the long-held belief that the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster can detect Earth's magnetic field. The study, which examined around 110,000 flies, failed to replicate the results of previous studies that suggested the existence of a magnetic sense in the species. This challenges the idea that Drosophila could be an ideal system for studying this enigmatic sense due to its small and experimentally accessible nervous system.