Facts about flies

Some interesting facts about flies

• There are more than 120,000 species of flies worldwide.

• They are highly sensitive to movement. They have two eyes each with over 4,000 lenses.

• Flies have a smelling distance of over 750 yards.

• A fly’s feeding range is usually limited to two miles.

• A single garbage can, if not emptied, can be the breeding ground for 30,000 flies.
• Before they fly they must jump up and move backwards then forward.

• Deer flies do not have piercing/sucking mouthparts like mosquitoes. They bite a hole in your skin with their strong mandibles, put a little saliva-like material in the wound to keep the blood from clotting and lap up the blood with a sponge-like proboscis . The deer fly usually buzzes silently around your head in ever-tightening circles. Eventually, it will find an exposed portion of your hand, arm or upper leg. The bite  usually results in a red welt that will disappear in a day or so (but itches like hell).

• Male deer flies (and horse flies) drink nectar from flowers. Only the females feed on blood;

• The house fly “hums” in the key of F and beats its wings over 20,000 times a minute

• Beginning with one pair of house flies in April, there would be a total of 191,000,000,000,000,000,000 flies by August if all the descendants of this pair lived and reproduced normally.

• Long-legged flies’ wings beat several hundred times per second- they achieve their highly complex aerial manoeuvres with only one pair of wings, the other having being converted into a gyroscope.

• Adult house flies usually live 15 to 25 days.

• House flies at an Everest base camp at 5000 metres are another sign of climate.

• House flies taste with their feet, which are 10 million times more sensitive to sugar than the human tongue

• House flies tend to stay within 1-2 miles of where they were born but will travel up to 20 miles to find food.