'Ethanosexuality'

[flexibeast]

Extrapolating from the sexual behaviours of fruit flies to the sexual behaviours of humans is, to say the least, fraught with risks. But this research puts amusing thoughts into my head about why alcohol consumption is so often central to (supposedly :-) ) rabidly heterosexual male culture:

Among the team's discoveries is that male fruit flies, which typically court females, also actively court males when they are given a daily dose of ethanol. "We identified three molecules that are crucial for "ethanol-induced courtship disinhibition," Han said. In one of the team's experiments, Han and her students generated transgenic flies whose brain activities regulated by the neurotransmitter dopamine could be turned off temporarily by changing the temperature to 32-degrees C. "Without a temperature change, the transgenic males showed conspicuous inter-male courtship under the influence of ethanol; however, they exhibited negligible inter-male courtship when we changed the temperature to block the transmission of dopamine neurons in the brain," Han said. "This result suggests that dopamine is a key mediator of ethanol-induced inter-male courtship."

"I luv yoo maaate!" *smirk*