Seeking voluntary passive movement in flies is play-like behavior

Abstract

Play-like behaviour (PLB) is pervasive across the animal kingdom, especially in vertebrate species. Invertebrate PLB has been restricted to social or object interaction. Here we examined individual PLB in the vinegar flyDrosophila melanogasterby providing voluntary access to a spinning platform - a carousel. We demonstrate that flies exhibit idiosyncratic carousel interactions that qualify as play-like behaviour. While some flies show spontaneous avoidance, others actively seek stimulation, engaging in repeated, prolonged visits to the carousel. We propose that flies voluntarily expose themselves to external forces to intentionally receive exafferent stimulation. Self stimulation provides an efficient way to improve self-perception via internal model training and can shape multisensory integration.

Pain and Suffering in Farmed Animals: First Steps Towards Better Understanding and Management (Musk and Clutton, 2024) - Insects

“…The impressive cognitive abilities of social insects have been (relative to solitary insects) well studied, hence our focus here. These abilities include: counting in bees (Dacke and Srinivasan 2008), numerical cognition that enables addition and subtraction in bees (Howard et al 2019), abstract concepts of same and different in wasps and bees (Giurfa et al 2001;Weise et al 2022), facial recognition in wasps (Tibbetts et al 2021), tool use in ants (Fellers and Fellers 1976), play-like behavior in bees and flies (Galpayage Dona et al 2022;Triphan and Huetteroth 2023), social information transfer (Frisch and Seeley 1967;Leadbeater and Chittka 2007;Mirwan and Kevan 2013;Bridges et al 2023), metacognitive-like processes (Perry and Barron 2013;Giurfa 2015), attention (Perry et al 2017), emotion-like states and judgment bias (Bateson et al 2011;Perry and Baciadonna 2017;Strang and Muth 2023), and self-medication (de Roode and Hunter 2019). There is an entire field of insect 'personality' (or, if you like, consistent individual behavioral differences) research (Jandt et al 2014).…”