Flies taste, smell, and feel with the hairs that cover their bodies. The hairs on the fly’s mouthparts and feet are used for tasting. Flies taste what they walk on.
When writing the name of true flies, which are in the order Diptera, use the word ‘fly’ in a separate word; blow fly. When writing the name of other insects with the word ‘fly’ in their name, write one word; firefly.
Flies use other hairs to tell them when they touch something. These hairs bend when touched.
The eyes of a fly do not have eyelids, so flies rub their eyes with their feet to keep them clean.
A fly cleans itself constantly.
There are 120,000 species of flies.
After studying 300,000 flies, researchers concluded that an average fly carries 2 million bacteria on its body.
The dehydrated larvae of the Polypedilum vanderplanki (a type of fly) were able to withstand exposure to liquid helium (-270 degrees Celsius) for up to five minutes with a one hundred percent survival rate.
Polypedilum vanderplanki breed in small pools on unshaded rocks in northern Nigeria and Uganda where they withstand an environment, which is alternately dry and
flooded. Polypedilum vanderplanki is the only insect definitely known to survive drying to <3% moisture.
A fly beats its wings 200 times a second, three times faster than a hummingbird.
According to researchers, the favourite colour of flies is red, followed by orange, black, violet, green, blue, white and yellow.
Fly eggs hatch into maggots within 24 hours.
The dung beetle lays its eggs in a ball of dung and then buries it. They can quickly and effectively dispose of piles of animal faeces before the flies have a chance to start breeding in it.
Several species of dung beetle have been introduced into Australia and they are proving to be very effective at controlling the fly problem.
