Drosophila melanogaster · a living connectome sketch
Offer a smell, a taste, or a touch. A simulation of the fly connectome responds, and the large fly brings its neural signals into this hand-drawn garden.
Click a fruit to offer its odor proxy. Tap the large fly to touch its antennae, or swipe quickly near it to present an approaching object. Its response arrives after the simulation finishes.
Offer me a stimulus and I will describe my neural response.
A description of the model responseInput rate applies to catalog stimuli. Physical channels use their own parameters below. Wind and tilt distribute input across sides.
Choose up to four simultaneous inputs.
Memory: loading…
A language model translates your words into stimuli. Physical controls work without it.
Neural reading:
Not requested.
VNC motor output:
No trial yet.
In the public Space, your browser has its own temporary pet. Resetting memory clears its learned associations.
Connecting to the live brain…
No stimulus yet.
The main fly waits for neural output; no random feeding or escape.
Waiting for a trial.
SourcesBrain model: Shiu et al. (2024), MIT code; FlyWire v783 (CC BY-NC 4.0). Receptor responses: DoOR 2.0 (CC BY-SA 4.0). VNC: MaleCNS v1.0 (CC BY 4.0). The garden visualizes neural readouts, not simulated body physics.
Twelve frames a secondCharacters are redrawn every frame, the background every other frame. Each line has three versions that cycle, so outlines “boil” the way they do in hand-drawn animation.
6 wingbeats, not 200A real Drosophila is 2.5 mm long and beats its wings about 200 times a second. This one gets six; the smear lines fill in the rest.
Smells from DoOREach fruit selects one explicitly named chemical proxy from measured receptor-response data. It is a chosen input, not a reconstruction of the fruit’s full smell. The garden uses the pet’s current learned memory.
A sketch of neural signalsThe large fly’s reactions use simulated neural readouts; its flight path is an illustration, not simulated biomechanics. Day, night and the small background flies are scenery. Public visitors have separate temporary memories; the neural simulation is shared.