Time-Telling FliesThe fly is extremely sensitive to odors associated with decomposition. Some biologists estimate that within 15 minutes of a person's death, the insect can detect the corpse—which serves as a potential incubator, hiding place, and feeding station all in one.
According to the California Institute of Technology flies fly within 100 milliseconds of recognising a threat. Flies have been around since before humans. In the Biblical plague of Egypt, flies represent death and decay. The Philistine God Beelzebub's name, (often equated with Satan), means Lord of the Flies.
How long do flies live for?
Housefly: 28 days
Culex pipiens: 7 days
Although mosquitoes and other blood-feeding insects are attracted to the carbon dioxide we exhale, we know the insect sensory system also helps find exposed skin. Since the skin near our faces is often exposed, that's one reason flies are always buzzing around your face and hands.
Conditions that attract flies in and around homes include:
- Garbage cans left uncovered.
- Animal carcasses in the walls, attics, or elsewhere.
- Manure or pet feces around yards.
- Fermenting fruit on countertops.
- Spilled soda and open containers of alcohol.
- Scum at the bottom and coating the inside of drains.
Homeowners typically find house fly eggs in moist, decaying organic material like trash, grass clippings, or feces. Elongated and pale in color, they appear in clusters and hatch quickly after being laid by the female fly.
Vinegar and dish soap fly trap
- Use a shallow dish bowl and fill it with an inch of apple cider vinegar and a tablespoon of sugar.
- Next, add some fruit-scented dish soap.
- You can leave the dish uncovered or tightly covered with plastic wrap. Make sure to poke a few holes in it to attract the flies.
LARGE FILTH FLIES
- House Fly (Musca domestica)
- Blow Flies (Calliphoridae spp.)
- Flesh Flies (Sarcophagidae spp.)
- Stable Fly (Stomoxys calcitrans)
- Cluster Fly (Pollenia rudis)
- Fruit Flies (Drosophila spp.)
- Phorid Flies (Phoridae spp.)
- Drain Flies (Psychodidae spp.)
These flies are primarily scavengers and most develop in meat or animal carcasses, but also in animal excrement and garbage. Dead animals (rodents, or animals caught in the chimney) are the usual source of flies within a structure, while dog excrement and garbage are common outdoor sources.
Adult house flies are about 1/8-1/4” (4 to 7.5 mm) long. They have slightly hairy bodies, a single pair of wings and compound red eyes, which contain thousands of individual lenses that allow them to have wider vision. Female house flies are usually larger than males.
Once inside, these flies have nothing better to do than wander around on windows and then fall to the floor as if dead. That's the really perplexing thing about cluster flies. At any point in their life, they can appear to be dead, half dead, almost dead or nearly dead, but, like zombies, they never quite expire.
If you have unseasonably warm weather in the late fall or winter, the cluster fly may emerge thinking it is spring, going for the warmer air outside. Cluster flies fly very slowly when they just wake up. They are strongly attracted to light, so they are usually found around windows.
Where Do They Live? These insects breed in flowing water, like streams, and rivers. Adults seek moist environments. Black flies are common in humid, wooded regions in summer months and can be found throughout semitropical regions year round.
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Walking with a trap mounted on a pole and shaken overhead can be effective. Black and red colored traps will also catch deer flies but in lesser numbers. Clean up: Traps must be covered with a sticky material, Tanglefoot, (available at many garden centers) to catch and remove the flies.
The most obvious way to get rid of flies is to use a spray, a fly trap or a fly strip. There is also the option of using a fly swatter if you can be bothered to squish every fly you get in your home.
Most spend the winter as adults in cracks and crannies and wake up in spring to lay their eggs on decaying matter. House flies delight in unhygienic places, and their maggots feed on rotting food and other human waste.
To make matters worse, several species of tsetse fly can transmit diseases. One of the most dangerous is a parasite that causes "sleeping sickness", or "human African trypanosomiasis"to give it its official name. Without treatment, an infection is usually fatal.
Flies hear with their antennae. These are freely accessible for measurements, thus being especially well-suited for analyses. During the process of hearing, a sound receiver is set in motion by sound waves. Downstream sensory cells in the fly's antenna are stretched by the deflection of the sound receiver.
About 90 percent of all flies occurring in human habitations are houseflies. Because it has sponging or lapping mouthparts, the housefly cannot bite; a near relative, the stable fly, however, does bite.
Flies are dirty. Flies don't exactly hang out in the cleanest environments, unless you count excrement, garbage, and carcasses as clean environments. And whenever and wherever flies land and crawl, bacteria in that location can stick to their bodies, especially their legs and wings.
Flies for example can carry Shigella, which can cause severe and often bloody diarrhea. “If this happens, it usually resolves itself within a week, but if it's severe, it may require antibiotics,” Dr. Pritt says.
People most at risk of illness from fliesBut Tetro explained that while houseflies leave bacteria on surfaces, it's a minimal amount and not enough to make most people sick.
Crane flies, also known as mosquito hawks, can grow to over 2 inches long with a 3-inch wingspan. A closer inspection would reveal lots of differences beyond size, but at a glance, a crane fly looks like a really big mosquito. (Although the name mosquito hawk is a misnomer. Crane flies don't eat mosquitoes.)
Because of this attraction to filth and rot, flies spread bacteria. They are strongly suspected to transmit at least sixty-five diseases to humans. Among them are typhoid fever, dysentery, cholera, poliomyelitis, yaws, anthrax, tularemia, leprosy and tuberculosis. Sounds wonderful, doesn't it?
