They're generally called vinegar flies, and they don't infest fresh fruit like fruit flies do when they lay their eggs in fruit.

Ok let me introduce you to the barn owl

You're right. They only drink horse (and cattle) blood.

Horse or cow vampire fly is a little long winded for a name.

But they do? Along with any other animal that happens to be nearby.

That is the one insect I will go out of my way to kill.

Without a lie they'd just be horsefs

No it's because they take a horse sized chunk out of you when they bite you

There's even the old Marx brothers joke "time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana"

The fruit fly trap taught to me by an entomologist friend is baited with wine, suggesting the fruit flies want fermenting fruit

The trap: get a plastic fizzy drink bottle; bigger is better

Cut off the top. The cut piece is a cone

Place the cone (the top piece) upside down on the rest of the bottle

Sticky tape the joint

Bait with cheap wine or leftover wine or beer. The bait is poured down the funnel into the trap

Her tastes were revealed in the description of baiting the trap — she specified red wine, but I have tested with various booze and fruit flies have no taste, they'll go for anything. You could probably extract bait from the sourdough starter you made in lockdown and kept alive despite never making bread after that first try

The fruit flies you've seen eating fresh fruit are probably Drosophila suzukii (spotted wing fruit fly). Most (all?) other Drosophila species (including the model organism Drosophila melanogaster) only feed on rotting fruit. Though they'll consume the sugars too, not just the microorganisms. So standard lab diets include sugar along with yeast and often cornmeal.

There are also some more distantly related flies that feed on fresh fruit and are commonly called fruit flies, eg Ceratitis capitata (Mediterranean fruit fly)

I’m sure the meme is apocryphal, and it’s not entirely correct. Fruit flies do eat yeast, yes…but they also eat the sugars in the fermenting fruit, not just the microorganisms causing fruit decay. I don’t know about the larvae at all, though.

Don't you drive a car?

Mosquito hawks do not, in fact, eat mosquitos.

I no longer respect those annoying fuckers.

Emperor penguins and king penguins are not descendants of any royal bloodlines and do not have an understanding of monarchical governments.

Nah, it just trips into the future

Someone tell this guy about Jeremy bearimy and timey wimey space stuff

W wait a s second! What do sperm wales eat? Have I been pointlessly jacking off into the ocean for decades??

Earthlings don't eat earth because "earth" isn't something to be eaten. Sperm whales don't eat sperm because sperm is (usually) not something to be eaten.

Fruit, however, is supposed to be eaten, and by many, many animals. By calling something a fruit fly, the expectation for most people would be that its diet consists mainly of fruit

Dobsonflies don't even eat Dobson!

What a world

I have rescued so many fruit flies from my beer. You hardly need to drown them, just present them with a 5% ethanol by volume solution and let them drown themselves

(My beer system is outside in my courtyard, fruit flies love the drip tray)