A complete 3D map of the brain of a male fruit fly has sparked a wave of online creativity, allowing internet users to program virtual fruit flies to perform surprisingly complex tasks. These include playing video games, trading cryptocurrency, cutting kebabs, solving a Rubik's Cube, and even driving a car to park. The connectome—a detailed 3D map of the connections between the 166,000 neurons in the male fruit fly’s nervous system—was released in early September. This followed the public release of the female fruit fly’s connectome two years earlier. Since then, social media platforms have been filled with content created by users, mostly computer science students and AI specialists, who have used these maps to simulate and control virtual fruit flies in various digital environments. By stimulating different parts of the virtual fruit fly brain with digital signals, users generate neuronal activity that is translated into actions through computer code and often with the help of artificial intelligence. These actions range from simple movements like "move forward" or "turn" to more complex ones like "pull the trigger." The results have been shared widely on social media, often in the form of short, amusing videos that highlight the unexpected capabilities of these tiny virtual brains. Nico Christie, an AI entrepreneur who created a program to make male fruit flies attracted to other males, told 404 Media that he found the trend amusing but believes it could benefit from more rigorous scientific exploration. The release of the male connectome, combined with the existing female connectome, marks a significant milestone. It provides the first opportunity to compare the neural structures of male and female adult animals at the level of individual synapses, offering insights into how sex differences influence behavior and anatomy. Evan Sinclair Smith, a computer science master’s student at Georgia Tech, started the trend by programming a virtual fruit fly brain to play Minecraft. He envisions that achieving similar detailed connectomes, such as those of the human brain, could lead to breakthroughs in understanding and treating brain disorders like Alzheimer’s. He also speculates that such knowledge might one day allow human intelligence to participate in space missions without the need for a physical body, opening up new frontiers in both neuroscience and space exploration.