Carl Zimmer writes today about a long-term Japanese experiment to keep fruit flies in total darkness, to see how they evolve: "Fifty-seven years of darkness".
[Syuichi] Mori managed to keep the last line of flies alive in the dark, and after his death, other Kyoto researchers kept the flies going. And today, they are still living in the dark, 57 years since their ancestors last saw light. That’s 1400 generations–which would be some 30,000 years if it were humans living in dark.