Flys

[mystyk_star]

How long is a fly's life span?

[New Forester]

There are many thousands of species of fly, and they are all different... (there are also lots of insects which are called "fly", like dragonfly, mayfly, butterfly, sawfly etc, but these are not true two-winged flies, properly called Diptera). If you're thinking of "ordinary" flies, such as houseflies, fruit flies or bluebottles, it's probably about a month. Eggs are laid on something suitable, (for those listed above, old food, dead meat, fruit, in that order). Tiny maggot larvae hatch out. They drink rather than eat, doing a lot of digestion first by pouring digestive stuff onto the food. They breathe through holes in their bottoms, so they can get the head end properly into the liquid. Maggots grow, like caterpillars, by shedding their skins. All this takes a week or two, depending upon temperature. When fully grown they wriggle away and turn into a pupa, inside the last larval skin which becomes a tough brownish shell. After another week or so the end of the shell pops open and the fly hatches out -- the fly has a bladder on its head to push off the lid, like a fluid-filled air-bag. Then the fly flies, and with luck it'll mate and if female lay more eggs. The adult fly cannot grow, nor repair frayed wings or broken legs, so after another couple of weeks it wears out (smaller flies are therefore smaller kinds, not babies of bigger ones). Most will have been eaten by something before wearing out. In winter, a few adult flies will hibernate, starting the whole thing again the next year. No doubt some species hibernate as a pupa. The many other kinds of flies do many other things -- for example some (flesh flies) "give birth" to tiny live maggots, or even (tse-tse flies and keds) to fully-grown maggots which have developed in a kind of womb. When I catch forest flies (a kind of ked) on our cattle, I often find "pregnant" females, and if I squeeze them a creamy-white round maggot pops out. Ugh!

[smudge]

Two seconds in my kitchen!

[mystyk_star]

Thank-you, Pretty disgusting. :-b