San Francisco startup Eon Systems claims to have created the first digital simulation of a fruit fly brain capable of controlling a virtual body and producing recognisable behaviours. The team connected a whole-brain connectome of Drosophila melanogaster — containing 125,000 neurons and 50 million synapses — to a virtual body model using the Brian2 neural network simulator. The resulting model demonstrated fly-like behaviours including walking, antenna cleaning, and extending its proboscis when presented with sugar scent signals. Dr Steve Furber, co-creator of the ARM processor, called the work "pretty impressive". However, critics note the simulated brain doesn't operate exactly as a real fly's brain does, relying on machine learning clamped into a connectome shape. The research builds on existing work including the Flywire connectome and NeuroMechFly v2 model.