Mouse versus fruitfly There is some interesting stuff about the comparison between doing this prize with a mouse and doing it with fruitflies drosophila A couple of the more interesting points are that in a lab you can cheaply maintain and process larger numbers of fruitflies than mice and the fruitfly lifespan is much shorter than the mouse lifespan so you get quicker feedback But I also understand the publicity argument that people feel more kinship with mice It s easier as a non scientist to believe that results in mice are much more relevant to humans Results in mice will more easily attract funding for subsequent work Does it make sense for researchers to work with fruitflies first and then port their techniques to mice for later confirmation and to collect the prize Hopefully that would take relatively little more time and expense than doing the whole thing with fruitflies We d eventually need to port these techniques from mice to humans anyway so there is a presumption that porting across species is feasible