---
title: "Fruit fly · Animals and other organisms · Entities · Simulation Hypothesis"
url: https://simulation-hypothesis.com/entities/drosophila
description: "The largest complete brain wiring diagram mapped so far, covering about 139,000 neurons."
license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
credit: "Ross Allan Dahl, Simulation Hypothesis (simulation-hypothesis.com)"
---

[Entities](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/entities) › Animals and other organisms › Invertebrates with brains

# Fruit fly

Drosophila melanogaster

The largest complete brain wiring diagram mapped so far, covering about 139,000 neurons.

Neurons

139,255 measured  · whole adult brain (proofread neurons, one female); excludes ventral nerve cord 

Dorkenwald S, Matsliah A, Sterling AR, Schlegel P, et al.; FlyWire Consortium (2024) Neuronal wiring diagram of an adult brain. Nature 634(8032):124-138\. doi:10.1038/s41586-024-07558-y.

## Evidence

* Flies learn visual place memory in a virtual arena.  
Ofstad TA, Zuker CS, Reiser MB (2011) Visual place learning in Drosophila melanogaster. Nature 474(7350):204-207\. doi:10.1038/nature10131.

The [New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness](https://sites.google.com/nyu.edu/nydeclaration/declaration) (2024) finds at least a realistic possibility of conscious experience in all vertebrates and in many invertebrates, including cephalopods, decapod crustaceans and insects.

Assess it against the published criteria