time flies [10/04/2004 21:19:37]

Because of their ability to breed quickly, fruit flies are often used to study genetics and evolution. At the University of Hampton in northern Kentucky, parabiologists Penelope LaRue and Fenwick Snodgrass have announced one of the most astounding experiments to date: a breed of precognizant critters know as the time flies.

"It's simple," said LaRue, a grandmotherly Nebraskan who founded the project in 1998. "We start with several thousand fruit flies, and we put them each in a little cage with two feeding troughs. During that time, we show them live forex charts on a little screen, and we treat their decision about which trough to eat from as a decision to buy or sell."

Forex, or foreign exchange, is the multi-trillion dollar-a-day currency market, where banks and speculators trade dollars for euros and vice versa, hoping to cash in as economies change.

"At first it was chaos," says Snodgrass, a grad student who came here from North Korea, where he had previously worked with the government to breed bananas that went brown in the shape of peerless leader, Kim Jong-Il. "The flies guesses were all over the map. The idea was to let the smart flies [those that guessed well] breed more often then the dumb ones. After a few weeks, things seemed to be going pretty well, but it was still hit or miss. I lost fifty bucks betting on specimen G5-431. That's when we introduced predators."

A computerized system, nicknamed the Swatter, was designed to zap any fly with an underperforming portfolio with several hundred volts of electricity. "That certainly whipped them into shape," says LaRue. "Accuracy went up sixty seven percent overnight. Just don't tell PETA!"

But couldn't the fruit flies simply be hyperintelligent speculators, on par with famous traders like George Soros? Soros himself had no comment, but LaRue was adamant. "It's psychic power we're breeding, not financial intelligence."