Making the paper: Roland Strauss.

The article provides information on a study on the spatial memory of the flies conducted by a group of German researchers lead by Ronald Strauss of the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany. It mentions that the ability of the flies to choose how to navigate their surroundings depend on their capacity for short-term, spatial memory. Strauss and his colleagues built a virtual reality fly arena to investigate whether the flies have brain. The wings of the flies were clipped and they were surrounded by a water moat. The result of the study suggests that the capacity of the flies for short-term memory is comparable to that of humans.