Love is blind, as the fruit fly can testify.

Love is blind, as the saying goes, and the fruit fly can literally attest to this, according to a study by a team of British biologists published in Nature Wednesday.

The fruit fly, as it is called, does not only spend its time circling overripe fruit or garbage cans. It also seeks to reproduce, and in the case of the male, with such ardor that it comes to ignore a risk of predation.

An international team led by researchers from the University of Birmingham has for the first time identified the neural network governing this decision-making, and the preeminent role played by a messenger, dopamine.

“When the male is courting and is close to mating, we see very clearly that when we introduce a threat, he simply does not see it,” explained Dr. Carolina Rezaval, who supervised the study.

The latter shows an increase in dopamine as the male’s seduction maneuver progresses, which “acts as a sensory filter blocking distractions and helping the animal to focus on the task at hand when it is close to the goal,” added the biologist from the School of Biosciences, quoted in a university press release.

His team showed that in the initial phase of seduction, the detection of danger activates, via visual neurons, the inhibition of nerve centers linked to seduction.

For this, she used a device that mimicked the presence of a predator whose shadow would threaten the fly. In this case, this stimulus “pushes the fly to abandon its courtship, and escape the danger,” according to Dr.^D Laurie Cazalé-Debat, first author of the study, cited by the University of Birmingham.

But if the seduction maneuver has been underway for a few minutes, “the increase in dopamine blocks key sensory circuits, reducing the fly’s ability to respond to the threat and causing it to focus on mating,” still the D^D Cazalé-Debate.

An attitude that we find in humans in other situations, according to D^D Lisa Scheunemann of Freie Universität in Berlin, who contributed to the study, said: “Imagine you’re climbing a mountain and you’re close to the summit. Even if the weather conditions get worse, you might ignore the danger because you’re so close.”

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