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There's so many mysteries related to how flies are able to make their way through the world. I'd certainly like to know a lot more about how their brain works. I'd certainly like to know a lot more about just how they're put together. I mean, these animals are basically, topologically, spheres. They don't have bones as we do, of course.

Fly flight is just a great phenomenon to study. It has everything - from the most sophisticated sensory biology; really, really interesting physics; really interesting muscle physiology; really interesting neural computations.

We cannot even predict what kinds of emergent properties would appear when animals begin interacting as part of a brain-net. In theory, you could imagine that a combination of brains could provide solutions that individual brains cannot achieve by themselves.

If you watch a fly on, say, a coffee table, you'll see that they're rubbing their little legs together to groom themselves; they're actually quite clean creatures.

I don't know about you, but I find it exhilarating to see how vague psychological notions evaporate and give rise to a physical, mechanistic understanding of the mind, even if it's the mind of the fly.

It's very likely that most mammals have consciousness, and probably birds, too.

Through shallow intellect, the mind becomes shallow, and one eats the fly, along with the sweets.

There has been so much underestimating of animal cognition that to perhaps overestimate it, as I probably do, is probably a healthy reaction.

An individual ant, even though it has a brain about a millionth of a size of a human being's, can learn a maze; the kind we use is a simple rat maze in a laboratory. They can learn it about one-half as fast as a rat.