Introductin: Unique facts of houseflies

Good day all! Today, we are going through the unique facts of houseflies!

Housefly Facts

Houseflies existed 65 million years ago. Houseflies are the most famous of 300 000 species of flies. They can be found all over the world. 

They can survive in all habitats where people can survive. Houseflies are pests because they easily reproduce (rapid breeder) and transmit numerous diseases. People apply various insecticides to eradicate them, but they are still very numerous and even resistant to some of those chemicals. On the other hand, houseflies are beneficial because they accelerate recycling process by decomposing organic waste.

The link below leads to other blogspot that shows how useful houseflies decomposing dead animals in images.
http://allofnature.blogspot.my/2011/06/flies-as-decomposers-disgusting-but.html

Interesting Housefly Facts:

• Housefly is a small grey in colour insect that can reach ¼ of inch in length. It has four dark stripes on the back side of the body.
• Unlike other insects, housefly has only one pair of membranous wings. Second pair of wings is reduced and looks like a pair of miniature drumsticks. This pair of wings (known as "halters") is used for balancing during the flight. 
• Houseflies are able to move their wings 200 times per second and reach a maximum of speed of 5 miles per hour when flying. 
• Housefly produces sticky substance which keeps the fly firmly attached to the ground (it acts like glue after landing).
• Housefly has red compound eyes which contains 4000 lenses each. This enable visualization of different pictures at the same time. Housefly still has poor eyesight despite large number of eyes.
• Sense of smell that is situated in the antennas are used to search for food by houseflies. 
• Housefly eats sugary liquids and different kinds of organic waste. All food needs to be turned into liquid before ingestion because fly does not have teeth and ability to chew food. Housefly spits digestive juices on the food to decompose it before swallowing.
• Houseflies are carriers of numerous pathogenic bacteria. Gangrene, tuberculosis, dysentery, anthrax, plague and different types of poisoning are just some of diseases transmitted by flies.
• Houseflies defecate every couple of minutes. This is one of the factors that facilitate transmission of diseases.
• Houseflies are active during the day and rest during the night.
• Houseflies undergo complete metamorphosis: egg will transform into larvae, larvae will transform into pupa and pupa will give rise to adult insect. Complete development lasts 10 days.
• Houseflies have incredible high reproductive capacity. Without natural predators, one couple of flies and their offspring would be able to cover all continents on Earth to the height of 18 feet after couple of months of reproduction.
• Housefly can survive around 1 - 2 months only.

That's all for today. Stay tune!