In response, sort of, to Project Insect Kaboom (see mini-AIR 2004-04), investigator Shelly Marino reports:
I recall that Vincent Dethier, in his wonderful book To Know a Fly (the book that turned me into a biologist in the first place) found that if he removed from a fly the dingus (technical jargon, hey?) that told the fly it was full, the fly would eat until it burst.
After a nice healthy jog to 3 libraries (one’s copy was missing, the [Cornell] Entomology Library’s electronic moving shelved didn’t) I found that memory as usual was jogging a little behind. The fly did not actually explode, or if it did he kept that gory detail to himself. He severed the nerve that runs from the brain to all parts of the gut.
“The results of this operation on a hungry fly were spectacular. Such a fly began to eat in the normal fashion, but did it stop? Never. It ate and ate and ate. It grew larger and larger. Its abdomen became so stretched that all the organs were flattened against the sides. It became so big and round and transparent that it could almost be used as a miniature hand lens. It was so round its feet no longer reached the ground and so heavy it could not launch itself into the air. Even though the back pressure from a near bursting crop was terrific, the fly continued in its attempts to eat. It reminded me of a woman who had been admitted to our hospital, a woman whose height was four feet, ten inches and whose weight approached four hundred pounds. Her major complaint was inability to move.”
The reference is: pp.53-55, To Know a Fly, V.D. Dethier, Holden-Day Inc., 1962.