A 3D fruit fly on macOS desktop powered by the real FlyWire connectome

A 3D fruit fly, powered by a live spiking simulation of the FlyWire connectome, exists as a desktop companion on macOS. This virtual fly navigates windows, grooms, sleeps, and avoids your cursor using the same neurons as its real-life counterpart. The brain window presents 23,210 real neuron somas from FlyWire v783, with spikes flashing at corresponding locations.

The two glowing yellow markers represent the Giant Fiber escape command neurons; clicking any area stimulates it. The body is procedural, featuring a tripod gait, visible wing-beats, altitude-scaled flight, grooming, and sleep postures. No permissions or entitlements are required, as the fly perceives your cursor, window frames, clicks, and thermal state without intrusion.

A 🪰 icon appears in the menu bar for quitting. The brain window is interactive, allowing hovering to pause rotation and clicking to optogenetically stimulate nearby circuit neurons for 400ms. The fly's reaction to stimulation mirrors that of the real network. The body-brain loop closes with the gait rhythm feeding proprioceptive neurons and fast cursor motion stimulating sensory partners.

The data files, derived from FlyWire Codex dumps (~60 MB download), are available as compact derived files, with the connectome providing wiring and not physiology. The code is open-source under the MIT license, and the data is available under CC BY-NC 4.0.