What you do think the white blobs to the top left of the fly’s head are?
Let me know your guess in the comments.
I’ll post the correct answer tomorrow evening. No cheating, no searching on the “university of google”!
Answers will be held up until tomorrow. I’ll post the answer in a separate post (this one is likely to be gone from the top page by then).
Original or “silly” answers welcome. I’d encourage serious answers to give a justification if you can.
Thiomargarita Namibiensis?
Please see update. Those of you who have commented, this is why your comments aren’t showing yet!! ;-)
OK, if you are going to keep all the messages in the cue then I’ll hazard a more specific answer: are those the testes and associated glands? I’m guessing this is one of those drosophilids that engages in sperm competition and as a result have testes that can make up to 10% of their body weight.
If that isn’t the right answer then you should dig out the photo of Drosophila bifurca along side one of its sperm to get an idea of what I’m talking about.
[...] photo in my picture puzzle shows several white blobs above next to a fruit [...]
I’ve put the answer up in a new post: http://sciblogs.co.nz/code-for-life/2009/11/03/worlds-largest-bacteria/
Well done, Daniel.
David, I realised after you wrote that little white blobs are rather ambiguous! In that sense this puzzle is a bit unfair, really. Your answer was good and I didn’t think of it at the time of writing.
Thanks for joining in.
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I’ll leave a slightly cryptic reply in case my answer is the right one: Is this perhaps one of several Drosophila species that display an unusual form of intra-specific competition?