A male fruit fly's brain trying to mate with a female fruit fly's brain, inside my browser..

A digital fruit fly brain just solved a Rubik's Cube today. Here's what you need to know. Developer Nick Walton trained a simulated fly brain to solve the puzzle and posted a demo video on X on September 11, 2026. The post quickly went viral, racking up hundreds of thousands of views. The model runs on MaleCNS v1.0, the complete wiring map of an adult male fruit fly's brain and central nervous system, released September 3, 2026 by HHMI Janelia Research Campus and Google Research. It's the same connectome behind this month's wave of viral stunts, including the fly brain playing Doom, Minecraft, Beat Saber, Mario 64, and driving a virtual Mini Cooper. Key numbers: - 166,700 neurons in the connectome - 125 million synaptic connections - 422.9K views on Walton's post Replies split between people amazed at the connectome's versatility and others questioning whether repurposing a real animal's brain map for stunts like this raises concerns about sentience and consciousness.