Colors and Mood by Angie Sotelo

Hello everyone! I’m Angie Sotelo and for my final project I decided to test if different colored light have an effect on the fruit fly’s mood. I know animals can have strong reactions to color. Certain colors might provoke fear or aggression. I want to see if fruit flies have any reaction to color. Similar to animals, humans associate certain things with color. For example, the color red can be associated with and invoke feelings of anger or danger. 

​Above I have a picture of the beloved PIXAR movie Inside Out. Yesterday when talking to Dr. Gardiner, Erin, and Serena about my project, for the comic/drawing part of the project they suggested using a play on the characters in Inside Out to represent the basis of my project (thank you guys so much for the awesome idea by the way!). So even though I can’t explore some of the more advanced human emotions, like disgust and fear, in flies, I want to see if different colored light can affect fly mood and make them irritable, similar to how humans associate blue with sadness or red with anger or green with disgust. 

These past few weeks at TRIP have been exciting but at the same time overwhelming. Seeing everyone else have amazing project ideas made me unsure about what I wanted to do for my project. Coming up with ideas is easy for me, but finding the meaning behind the ideas has been difficult. But I’m doing my best to work out those details, even if I have to (accidentally) kill some flies along the way.