Fly Brain

Watch a fruit fly's brain light up as it sees your camera move, hears you talk and feels every tap. Then set it on your table in AR and walk all the way around it.

A fruit fly, with its brain on show. Watch its nervous system light up in real time as it sees through your camera, listens through your microphone and responds to touch and motion.

What it senses • Wave a hand or finger in front of the camera and its optic lobes light up, each eye from its own side. • Talk, clap or play music and the hearing centre in its brain flares up. • Turn your phone and its balance organs light up. • Tap one of its legs and a signal runs up that leg's own nerve. Tap its body and it shudders.

How it behaves • Talk to it, or make a loud noise, and its wings buzz. • Show it a strong colour, like a piece of fruit, and it sets off walking. • Move something suddenly in front of the camera and it freezes with caution. • Bring something quickly towards the camera and it gets frightened and tries to escape. • Leave it alone for a while and it stops to clean itself.

Inside its head The brain is built from real measurements: 34 regions in their measured shapes, drawn in over 3,000 points of light, and more than 500 real neurons traced from electron microscope images, each along its own path. Open the brain view to see 12 regions named, then pinch right in until the lobula plate splits into its four layers.

The shapes and the neurons are real. The activity is illustrated, not recorded.

On your table Tap AR to put the fly in your room. Pinch it from 5 cm to 20 m long and walk all the way around it.

Make it yours Pick from eight skins, or go see-through and watch the brain light up inside the head.

Private The camera and microphone are optional, and nothing they pick up is recorded, stored or sent anywhere. No ads, no accounts.

Brain region shapes and neurons are based on public data from Janelia's FlyEM project and the Male CNS team (HHMI Janelia, the University of Cambridge, the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology and Google Research), used under CC BY 4.0. Fly Brain is not affiliated with or endorsed by them.