We are surrounded by a diverse world of insects: from small spider bugs, which are not even visible, to large bright butterflies that delight the eye. And among this large variety of creatures there are flies - small winged insects, completely ugly in appearance. They are not favored because of their annoyance and intrusiveness, but, worst of all, they are carriers of various microorganisms and bacteria that can cause various diseases: from simple poisoning to tuberculosis and typhoid. We are surrounded by a large number of species of flies, which must be able to recognize, so as not to be confused with other insects that are harmless to humans.
Fly classification
In the world there are 40 thousand species of flies, which can be divided into three large groups:
- settlement: live in close proximity to humans, in the wild are not able to survive, indoor flies,
- semi-village (optional settlement): can live both next to humans and in the wild, meat flies,
- grazing: live in the litter of livestock in pastures, fly into settlements, manure flies,
Also flies are divided into those that feed:
- fruits and berries: melon and garden,
- vegetables: lily, cabbage, garlic, cucumber, sprout,
- flowers: peony,
- the blood of animals and people: black (April), tsetse fly,
- rot and carrion: green, domestic, dung, gray meat,
- other insect pests: hoverflies, coifers,
Garden flies harm the harvest of fruits and berries
What types of flies are most common
The world of flies is diverse, which, in addition to the structure of the organism and the life cycle, have one common property - intrusiveness. Whatever the insect: dangerous or relatively safe for humans, it will be very difficult to get rid of. What beckons flies to us? These creatures have a well-developed sense of smell, they are attracted by various sweet and not very aromas (but the most pleasant smell for most of them is the scent of rot), to which they fly. We prepare many dishes that have all sorts of tastes and smells - they attract these insects so much that they make them overcome rather large compared to their size distances and fly into our homes.
The attracting scent overlaps everything with flies, sometimes even the instinct of self-preservation, so many people answer the question "How many species of flies do you think?" Answer: "one is annoying."
Home fly
A home (or indoor) fly lives exclusively in close proximity to a person’s dwelling, where there is a lot of food and household quickly rotting waste. Existence far from people for this species of insects is impossible, so in the warm season they are all the time nearby: they live in our kitchens, where they store food and their waste, fly through the open windows to stay for a few hours, and it is quite difficult to drive them out.
Domestic flies are considered the most annoying
The house flies do not have a piercing-sucking oral apparatus, so they cannot bite a person, but this does not make them completely harmless. These insects have three pairs of limbs, each with small tentacles-suckers, to which various bacteria and microorganisms stick, and then they are transferred by flies to the products. Creatures of this species are completely unremarkable: they have a gray-brown body with nondescript wings, but very bright red eyes. They occupy almost the entire head, the lower part of which is yellowish, and the upper part - of sand color. On the head there are antennae and oral cavity.
Flies have two pairs of wings: the first is for flight, the second (it's called halter) is used to maintain balance. It is the halter who makes the sound that we call the buzz.
Domestic flies are daytime insects that fall asleep at nightfall and wake up when the sun has already risen. They are active only in the warm season, in the autumn, with the onset of the first cold weather, they fall into hibernation.
On average, house flies live for 3-4 months. First, an adult female lays eggs (about a hundred in one clutch), from which, after 8–50 hours (depending on climate), a larva appears. It is a small worm up to 13 mm long, which lives in animal feces and in household waste. Approximately once a week a molt occurs in the larva, after the third the outer shell of the worm hardens, disappears, and the creature turns into a pupa. After 3 days, an adult individual is born, which becomes sexually mature after 36 hours. During its relatively long life, one fly can lay up to 10 thousand eggs.
The larva of a fly looks like a small chopped worm
These insects feed on the same things as humans, but prefer liquid or half-liquid food because they are not able to bite. For eating solid foods, flies emit saliva, which is capable of dissolving substances of varying hardness.
A housefly can be found throughout Russia, but the closer to the south, the milder and warmer the climate and the larger the insect. To deal with it is very difficult, but possible. The most effective are the usual insect nets, which can be put in window and door openings, and sticky tapes that have a certain kind of smell that attracts flies - they sit on the tape, stick and can not fly away. It is not recommended to use fumigators and various chemical baits, especially if there are pregnant women, children or domestic animals in the house, since these products release harmful substances into the air.
Hoverfly
Hoverfly flies (or syrphids) look very similar to wasps. Even the behavior of these insects is identical: the sirfids can freeze in place during the flight, while continuing to flap their wings, but they are completely harmless to humans - they do not bite like wasps.
The hoverfly flies got their name due to the sound, which is formed during the operation of their wings - it is very similar to the sound of water.
Hoverfly flies are found mainly in fields, gardens, and vegetable gardens, where there are many umbrella and complex flowers. Like all insects, they are most active during the daytime during warm seasons, and hibernate for the winter.
Hoverfly Flies are harmless creatures
Hoverfly flies have a small body, covered with alternating black and yellow stripes. They have only one pair of transparent wings and huge brown eyes. In zhurchalok long proboscis, which is used by them for the extraction of nectar, neither people nor animals bite.
The wasp body is more segmented
Syrphids feed mainly on plant nectar, but can be eaten by aphids, eggs of various insects and spider mites. Human food does not attract them at all.
Osopodobnye flies lay 150–200 eggs at a time, laying is done mainly in the habitats of aphids, which are very convenient for the larvae to hunt. They appear in 2-4 days after laying eggs and look like small chopped off worms. Larvae feed on their own, becoming more gluttonous every day, so in 2-3 weeks of their life they are able to eat more than 2 thousand aphids. Then the larvae turn into pupae, from which, after 7–10 days, an adult individual appears.
The hoverfly larvae are very lazy, but their hunt for aphids looks quite interesting: as soon as the victim is noticed, the worm rises, begins to sway from side to side and after a few moments very quickly pounce on the prey, immediately absorbing it. To get yourself more food, you need to move. For this, the larva “rolls” the mass of its body from one end to the other, thus moving in space.
Aphid parasites on plants
Hoverflies live a short time: on average, 1–1.5 months, but even for such a short life they bring many benefits to the garden, eating various insects. Many summer residents create favorable conditions for the life of the horny babies, so that they settle on their territory and save them from pests. It is not necessary to get rid of sirfidov.
Green fly
A green (or fallen) fly is rightfully considered to be one of the most beautiful insects: it has a neat, glossy body of emerald green color, large brown eyes that blend perfectly with a pair of smoky wings. All its legs have tentacles, which are adhered to by bacteria and microorganisms, which this fly carries over long distances.
Green fly has an incredibly beautiful color
It is a pity that such a beautiful creature feeds on carrion and rot, therefore it must be chased away and even destroyed, and not admired as we would like. It lives on the corpses of animals, in domestic waste and in feces, but sometimes it is found on flowers with a very strong sweet smell.
Green flies are also found on flowers with a pronounced sweet aroma.
Green flies lay up to 180 eggs in the same place where they feed - in rotten foods and bodies. Females try to hide their eggs as deep as possible so that when a larva is born (and this happens after 6–48 hours), she has a lot of food. At the larval stage, flies stay from 3 to 9 days, after which they crawl away into the soil, where they turn into pupae. After another 10-17 days, an adult fly appears, which is selected to the surface.
Green flies live 2–2.5 months (if you count from laying eggs), for the winter they hibernate in the foliage and bark of trees.
It is impossible to prevent the appearance of fallen flies in your house, since they will bring on their paws a huge amount of bacteria from corpses and feces, which will cause at least poisoning and intestinal diseases. The most effective means against these flies are insect nets and ordinary adhesive tapes, which have a pleasant smell for flies. If you do not have pets at home, you can buy a flycatcher plant.
Flycatcher is a very beautiful plant that feeds on the blood of insects
Fly elynitsa-beekeeper
The bee-bee Ilnitsy belong to the family of tinkers, only they do not resemble wasps, but bees. They have a rather large body - on average, 1.5 cm in length, the belly is rather “plump” than these flies and resemble bees. Taurus brown with large reddish-yellow spots on the sides. Unlike other flies, the litter trays are covered with very small hairs - even the eyes and limbs have hair.
Another name for the beekeeper is the tenacious
Bee-bees live near plants with strong-smelling flowers, the nectar of which they eat. Adult individuals are absolutely harmless for both humans and insects, so there is no sense to plant them specifically, and there is not much to destroy either.
Illytsy lay their eggs in various impurities, therefore the ingress of eggs or larvae into the human body (for example, from unwashed hands or products) can lead to infection of intestinal diseases (for example, enteritis).
The larva is born 18–48 hours after laying eggs, its body length reaches two centimeters, but a special breathing tube, with which the worm breathes, can stretch by as much as 10 cm. This is due to the fact that the larvae live in sewage, and must breathe only clean air.
The most active birds are from July to October, in the cold season, these flies hibernate.
A bee has a more shaggy and segmented body.
Since a person can be harmed only by eggs and larvae of a beehive, carefully wash your hands after coming from the street, rinse food, and make sure that houses do not accumulate rotting household waste, where the bottle can lay their eggs.
King-birds are large predatory flies that destroy other insects: mosquitoes, midges, beetles, and even bees. They feed exclusively on flying organisms, they do not harm either man or his crop, so the ktyrey should not be scared away or even destroyed - even though they are ugly-looking, but good helpers in the fight against pests and blood-sucking insects.
Ktyr can fight even with the hornet
These flies look really not very attractive: a small body of dark brown color is completely covered with hairs, huge brown eyes, a sting with poison, which they inject into their victim. Incredibly long compared to the body, the limbs are also covered with hairs. It is their ktyri catch their prey in the air. Long powerful wings of dark brown color with small light strips help themselves and their sacrifice in flight.
Ktyri lay their eggs in various rotting matter: wood, soil, and so on. As soon as the larvae emerge from the eggs, they immediately begin to destroy the small insects that are nearby. Often, one larva becomes a victim of another (and an adult individual can eat its own kind).
Ktyri live, like all flies, 2–2.5 months, active in the warm season. They are found both in cities, and in vegetable gardens, and far from people.
The tsetse fly is the most dangerous fly on the entire planet Earth, which, fortunately, lives in Africa. She is a carrier of the so-called sleeping sickness, from which it is possible to die if timely medical care is not provided. This fly feeds exclusively on the blood of animals and people.
Bernhard Grzimek (zoologist and conservationist) in his book “There is no place for wild animals” said that it was thanks to the tsetse fly in equatorial Africa that the habitats of large wild animals, almost untouched by man, remained.
The female gives birth to larvae, which immediately become pupae, in a dark place, closer to the soil. It is there that the pupae will develop within a few days, until they become adult individuals.
tsetse fly is very beautiful, although the color of her back is unremarkable - gray
Tsetse flies are extraordinarily beautiful: the chest of an insect is reddish-gray, covered with longitudinal dark brown stripes, yellow-gray belly, gray back with black and milky pattern, long branched proboscis, transparent powerful wings, which insect folds one over the other and on which look is looked like coffee color drawing But do not be fascinated by this creature - for humans they are dangerous.
Wings of a tsetse fly have an unusual “hatchet” pattern
If you go to Africa, be sure to get vaccinated for sleeping sickness.
We are surrounded by countless different insects: some of them harm humans, some, on the contrary, help with various pests and save the crop. You need to be able to distinguish friends among all insects and not kill them, but create favorable conditions for their life. Chemical means, of course, better destroy various insects, including aphids, but they are not as safe for humans as, for example, hover flies. Use the helpers that nature itself gives you.
Interesting facts about insects
Annoying, biting, spreading bacteria everywhere, and often deadly diseases. Flies most of the year with the exception of winter never leave us alone.
We present you interesting facts about flies.
In total, there are about 750 thousand species of representatives of these insects. However, these are not final numbers at all. Scientists, conducting annual research, find more and more new species of flies.
The most dangerous and poisonous fly is tsetse. This insect is a carrier of diseases incompatible with human life.
There is another fly, which is dangerous for humans and not only - the green fly. In addition to all the bacteria that it does not count, these insects are carriers of helminth eggs.
After the female is given love joys, she becomes very hungry. And, since apart from the male "at hand" nothing more is provided, the front sight can also be enjoyed by them.
Therefore, the latter come to intercourse with a piece of edible.
Did you know that zebras are the only representatives of the animal world that a tsetse fly will never touch?
This is due to their color - black and white stripes have some magical effect, scaring off poisonous flies.
It turns out that the proboscis and legs of these insects are simply infested with bacteria! Due to the fact that flies "do not disdain" waste from food, more than a million bacteria live on their bodies.
In one second a fly can perform up to 200 “acrobatic etudes”. This is something incredible, if you look at the actions of the insect. It can fly both forward, and back, and upside down, and head down - as soon as you want.
Did you know that pig waste (manure) can contain up to 15 thousand fly larvae.
Do you know which parasite flies are actually executioners? It turns out that they lay their larvae in insects such as bees, wasps, ants, and when they hatch, they eat their owners right from the inside.
Flies are negligible in their weight. So, if 1000 pieces of these insects are put on the scales, then their weight will be about 25-30 grams (!).
You will find other interesting facts about flies in the video “Flies are an incredible harm - diseases and infections”.
1. House flies are found almost everywhere where there are people.
The house flies are from Central Asia, but now they live in almost every corner of the globe. With the exception of Antarctica and possibly several remote islands, house flies live wherever there are people.
Они являются синантропными организмами, которые зависят от человека, его жилья и домашних животных.
Поскольку люди путешествуют с незапамятных времен на кораблях, самолетах, поездах или конных повозках, мухи всегда сопровождают нас в пути.
Наоборот, они редко встречаются в пустыне или в местах, где нет людей. Если человечество перестанет существовать, эти насекомые могут разделить нашу судьбу.
2. Комнатные мухи — относительно молодые насекомые на эволюционной шкале времени
The family of real flies are ancient creatures that appeared on Earth in the Permian period more than 250 million years ago. But house flies seem relatively young compared to their dipter cousins.
The oldest fossils of these insects are only 70 million years old.
This suggests that the closest ancestors of the housefly appeared during the Cretaceous period, shortly before the infamous meteorite fell, which led to the disappearance of dinosaurs.
3. Domestic flies multiply rapidly
If it were not for the reproductive restrictions imposed by environmental conditions and predation, the planet would have been buried under a swarm of flies. Musca domestica has a short life cycle of only 6 days, and the average clutch of the female contains about 120 eggs.
Scientists estimate what will happen if one pair of flies can reproduce without restriction and mortality among the offspring. Result? Two flies in just 5 months will lead to the emergence of 191,010,000,000,000,000,000 descendants who will cover the planet with a layer of several meters.
4. Domestic flies rarely fly long distances.
The movement of the wings of a housefly can reach up to 1000 strokes per minute. This is not a typo! Surprisingly, they, as a rule, are slow pilots flying at a speed of about 7 km per hour. Flies move when environmental conditions force them to do so.
In urban areas, where people live in close proximity and there is a lot of garbage, house flies have small territories and make flights within 1000 meters. Although, rural flies in search of manure can travel long distances, covering up to 11 km.
The longest flight distance recorded for a housefly is 32 km.
5. Houseflies live off waste.
House flies feed and breed in the waste we produce: litter, animal manure, wastewater, human excreta and other unpleasant substances.
In the suburbs or rural areas, these insects are numerous in fields where fishmeal and manure are used as fertilizer, as well as compost heaps, where there are accumulations of rotting herbs and vegetables.
6. Houseflies are on a completely liquid diet.
They have spongy mouthparts that are good for sucking up liquified substances, but not for solid foods. Thus, the fly is either looking for liquid food, or it finds a way to dilute the food source.
When the house fly discovers something tasty but hard, it spits up to eat (which can turn out to be your barbecue).
Vomiting contains digestive enzymes that dilute the food so that the insect can eat it.
7. Flies determine the taste of food with the help of paws.
How do flies determine that food is edible? They step on her! Like butterflies, indoor flies have taste buds on the lower legs. As soon as a fly lands on something interesting, such as garbage, a pile of horse manure, or your lunch, it starts to taste potential food, simply walking through it.
8. Houseflies transmit many diseases.
Because flies thrive in places that are rife with pathogens, they have a bad habit of carrying pathogens from place to place.
The insect will land on a pile of dog food, examine it with its paws, and then fly over to your table and walk along a hamburger bun.
It is known that indoor flies transmit at least 65 diseases and infections, including cholera, dysentery, giardiasis, typhoid fever, leprosy, conjunctivitis, salmonella and many others.
9. Flies can walk upside down.
You probably noticed that the flies walk on the ceiling, but do you know how they perform this feat, defying gravity? Each of the legs of the housefly has clawed legs with a sticky pillow, so the insect can hold on virtually any surface - from smooth window glass to the ceiling.
10. Flies often defecate.
Since house flies live on a liquid diet (see clause 6), food moves rather quickly through their digestive tracts. Thus, in addition to vomiting on foods that insects consider edible, they often leave their experiments. Keep this in mind the next time you touch the food along which the fly has walked.
The most interesting facts about flies
Flying "kerosene"
Here, perhaps, all that the average man in the street knows about flies. Frankly speaking - not rich. But this is, in fact, the most amazing creation of nature, which, in the event of a cataclysm, will survive not only us, but also many other representatives of the Earth’s fauna.
To begin with, flies can live wherever we can live, but at the same time are able to exist and breed in places where homo sapiens can look only for a short while and only with special equipment.
For example, there are flies, thermal springs in Iceland, America, Japan and New Zealand that have chosen to be their place of residence.
The offspring of these “boiled” flies are born and live at a temperature of about 55 degrees Celsius and not only do not boil, but consider these conditions quite comfortable.
There are flies capable of living in salt marshes, and flies are found in California, whose home is the lake of crude oil. The larvae of these flies are equipped with very real scuba diving.
True, oil all the same enters the body of an insect along with food (that's just where they take food in the lake of fuel and lubricants?), But the digestive system of these “gasoline” flies is designed so that the oil passes freely through their body without splitting into it, and not lingering inside without extreme need.
Jumping cheese
And what about nutrition? The range of components of a fly dinner is well known to everyone, here, as they say, both honey and droppings. However, there are individuals who are the real gourmets. For example, flies, living only in onions, or only in carrots.
But piofilida or so-called cheese flies, agree to multiply and multiply, as the name implies, only inside the heads of the cheese. And not some seedy, but the most expensive varieties.
Say, in Sardinia, a cheese is produced called Kasu marzu. They say - tasty, not tasty, but exotic spicy - that's for sure. The basis of the production of this cheese are the pyophilid larvae.
They start up in ordinary rotting cheese, “recycle” it, after which the cheese should rather be eaten, after putting on glasses, as those pissed that they were disturbed, the larvae, can jump you, say, directly into the eye.
It's funny that there are gourmets who think that it is the larvae that make up the piquancy of this type of cheese. And it must be eaten with the “living” components.
In fact, piofilid larvae do not add any piquancy to cheese. Moreover, they don't give a damn about human gastric juice - it is completely harmless to the larvae.
And therefore, once in your body, they easily become comfortable with it and can even begin to multiply and multiply, or cause inflammation of the mucous membrane. At best, they will come out of your intestines safe and sound during a bowel movement.
So if you reach this forbidden cheese, then whatever you say, it's better to remove the larvae from it beforehand.
By the way, in Italy, the sale of Kasu marzu is prohibited, because its use can cause poisoning.
Brain Eaters
But we digress. In addition to cheese, meat, vegetables, fruits and waste, so to speak, animal and human production, flies can live in living beings. For example, there are flies that live in bumblebees or caterpillars. Their larvae, in principle, can parasitize on anyone, from the earthworm to the human.
In this species-rich family there is a frank monster - a fly, which lays eggs under the skin of some gaping toad. When the larvae of this parasite are born, they climb up through the nasal openings of the toad in the head and begin to eat its brain. It is clear that under such conditions, even that toad, which the brain is not needed at all, will not last long.
There is a worse option. The North American meat fly can do the same trick with a person and, if you do not see a doctor in time, the unfortunate is waiting for the fate of a toad eaten away from the inside.
It should be noted that there are quite decent flies, ready to compensate for the damage they cause. For example, termitoxenia, which settles, as the name implies, in a colony of termites and feeds on their own eggs, firstly, it doesn’t eat too many eggs, and secondly, it allocates a special secret, which termites love and , compensate them for damages.
From a gastronomic point of view, people also do not deprive flies of their attention. We have already spoken about the Italian cheese flies, but in North America, snipe flies dwell, which, having laid the egg, immediately die.
And these local dead tribes collect these dead flies (at least, they used to collect them before) and bake them in buns instead of raisins. So be careful if you have to eat on Indian reservations.
Suddenly this custom is still preserved somewhere.
Interesting facts about flies
In England, in the barnyard alone, up to 6,000 species of flies can live.
Fly larvae recycle mountains of waste. One adult fly lays up to 1,000 eggs, of which, after 11 days, another thousand flies appear. If they all survive, then in 6 weeks a mountain of a quarter billion larvae will appear.
Flies lived on the earth long before the appearance of man. Some flies steal prey from spider nets. Being rather sickening creatures, in addition to various kinds of trouble created by humans and animals, these insects are also good. They perform extremely important work on the planet. The world would have been stuck in corpses and waste, if not these creatures.
Mushroom "Veselka" learned how to deceive flies and use these insects for their own purposes. The tip of the fungus is covered with spores and a juicy secret, resembling rotting flesh with its smell. Naturally flies cannot resist it. They arrive to eat and lay eggs. Sweet mucus is quickly eaten by them. This is exactly what the Veselka needs.
Despite the fact that part of the dispute is eaten, the other will stick to the legs and move, spreading the mushroom progeny. Not only mushrooms use the services of these small flying creatures, but the plants too. On a tiny island not far from Sardinia, the "symplocarp" emits a rotting smell.
It attracts flies, and they climb into the flower to lay eggs, but they fall into the trap. They eat nectar and transfer pollen from other flowers. Simplokarpus imitates rotting flesh so faithfully that flies lay their eggs. But the larvae die because they have nothing to eat.
So the flies are in confinement, until the male part of the flower ripens and sprinkles them with pollen. Then the flower will open, and insects will spread the pollen to other plants. The task of the plant is completed. People also use flies for their own purposes, they are the best friends of fishermen. Larvae are grown in billions and sold to lovers of fishing in the form of flats.
Larvae are one of the best treats for fish. Flies are an important link in the food chain on our planet, people would not survive without them. If a pair of flies were given the opportunity to breed and all their offspring survived, then at the same time only summer, we would get a mountain of pupae tall with a six-story house and an area with the territory of Germany. A quarter of all insects on earth are flies.
Each housefly carries 3,000,000 bacteria. It is believed that mosquitoes have killed 50 percent of all people on the planet since the Stone Age. Nowadays, the malaria mosquito kills one person approximately every ten seconds. Nevertheless, flies play an important role. They rid the earth of corpses, process manure, pollinate plants better than bees.
Their larvae save us from many parasites. Without them, one aphid, in just one year, would cover the entire globe with a green carpet of its offspring depth of 150 kilometers. The muscles moving their wings are reduced faster than anyone in the world. They can hover in the air, fly backwards and head down.
Their reaction is 10 times faster human reaction.
What we know about flies
Photo: Maarten Wouters / Getty ImagesA man shares his dwelling with many smaller brothers, and this is not always the neighborhood is voluntary. Insect, which will be discussed, it is impossible not to notice. It will be annoying to buzz over your ear in the morning, when you most want to sleep, bite, fall into the glass, into the soup, the traces of its activity "decorate" furniture and other things in the apartment. Of course, we are talking about flies. But what do we know about them?
The house fly lives 14 days.
The dimensions are tiny (1000 adult flies weigh 25-30 g). It feeds exclusively on liquid food, sucking it with its proboscis mouth. The fly does not fly away from the place where she was born, more than 100 meters, but often becomes an unwitting traveler, "carried away by the wind."
A fly, like a butterfly, tastes with the help of receptors located on its paws.
A house fly has two large brown eyes, each consisting of a thousand lenses. These eyes are called "complex". In addition, at the top of the head, the fly has three more “simple” eyes, looking straight up, visible only in a magnifying glass. Fly sees almost 360o, but not very clearly and no more than 40-70 cm.
The life of a fly is strictly subject to the ambient temperature. At a temperature of 10 ° C, the fly can still fly, if it is very scary, and if the temperature is lower, it can no longer. At temperatures above 24 ° C flies go down, it is hot. At 44 ° C, thermal paralysis occurs in flies.
When a fly bites you, it's unpleasant. Did you know that this is not a house fly at all? It’s just that most of us can't tell the difference between a house fly, an autumn zhigalka and a desert fly or dung fly. By the way, they do not know how to bite, and they, but they painfully scrape the proboscis.
If domestic flies do not bite, why does man lead an implacable struggle with them for centuries? The fact is that the whole body of the fly is covered with sticky hairs.
It is they who make the fly a peddler of the infection, who has chosen both our dishes and latrines at the same time. But the microbes adhering to the fly, die quickly enough. Much more dangerous are those that fall into its digestive system.
A fly has something like a goiter, where it stores some of its food. Every two minutes, a fly ejaculates the contents of the goiter.
So, for a long time, mankind has applied such natural methods of dealing with flies, such as spraying premises for livestock with water, drafts that flies do not tolerate, and winter freezing of premises at temperatures below 10 ° C, so that all winterized individuals will die. In addition, you should always remove waste, so that the flies have nowhere to put the larvae. You can still run into the barn of chickens, they are happy to peck the larvae.
But in giant pig farms in the territory of the GDR, where there were so many flies that the workers were forced to put on a mask like beekeepers, they helped bring out the American manure flies.
And if it was not a change of sewing on the soap? Not at all, adult American flies live exclusively in the ground, where manure does not annoy anyone, except for domestic flies, of course.
The fact is that their predatory larvae eat away the larvae of domestic flies.
Chemicals in the fight against flies are not suitable. From the poison, by the way, harming pigs, most flies die, but some survive, get used to it and pass on this immunity to their descendants. And the poison loses its effectiveness after a few generations (say, after five), which is a matter of several weeks for flies. As they say, the game is not worth the candle.
However, some nations had warm feelings for flies. For example, the ancient Egyptians considered the fly a symbol of audacity and fearlessness. Warriors who distinguished themselves with special courage were awarded medals in the form of a fly.
Let's think, are we fair to these insects? Someone said: “We don’t need to reproach the Lord for creating flies, complaints are not addressed. Flies are simply the incarnation of all our dirt. ” After all, it is in the waste they are born, and live to eat them.
They are desperate and involuntary fighters for cleanliness. And their contribution to this business is great. Karl Linney at one time calculated that the offspring of three flies will be able to eat the carcass of a horse faster than a lion. Their contribution to science is invaluable, they are always on its front, their lives are moving it forward.
The larvae of meat flies - maggots - are useful not only for fishing. They are used in many medical centers in Europe and the USA to clean wounds from dead tissues and suppurations. Larvae devour such places, leaving the wound clean.
What would be the birds that we admire if there were no flies?
And I would like to finish with a quote from an article on muxasite.narod.ru: “Usually we know little about them, although they are omnipresent. We consider them the last rubbish, and their larvae do not disdain to clean up any impurities behind us.
We stigmatize them as parasites, and they, barely hatched from eggs, are already fighting pests. We are trying to exterminate them, and they humbly pollinate our plants.
We send them to hell, and our happiness that they did not go there, but everyone also kindly coexists with us. ”
Where does the fly winter? Club why
Hello, dear readers and members of the Club “why?” In today's release of the Club, I will answer the question of Alina’s mother and her son Serezha (2.9 years): “Where does a fly sleep in winter and where is its house?”
Finally, the spring sun has warmed! And with the arrival of the first warm days, the first guests appear in our house - flies. Where do they come from? Where did you spend the winter? Где их дом? Я об этом обязательно расскажу. Но для начала мне бы хотелось поближе познакомить вас с этими насекомыми.
Семейство настоящие мухи (lat. Muscidae) относится к короткоусым двукрылым насекомым, в него входят около 5 тыс. видов, разделенных более чем на сто родов. Но чаще всего мухи, которых мы встречаем у себя в квартирах, относятся к виду комнатные мухи. Кроме них мы еще сталкиваемся с мясными мухами, жигалками, и фруктовыми мушками-дрозофилами.
Слева направо: комнатная муха, зеленая мясная муха, серая мясная муха, дрозофила, осенняя жигалка
Today I will talk about the life of an ordinary housefly. Ask the kid what he knows about her? Everyone is familiar with the KI Chukovsky's fairy tale “Fly Tsokotuha”. What can we learn from it about a real fly? Probably only that the fly has an enemy - a spider.
Another enemy of the fly we know from the name of the mushroom "mushroom". Indeed, the juice of amanita very attractive to flies, but is for them (as for us) poisonous.
Flies have many other enemies, even their names speak for themselves: a little bird flycatcher like many other birds feed on flies, a centipede flycatcher - a terrible-looking, but completely harmless to humans, predatory flower "Venus flytrap"Like his other relatives from the family sundew lures the flies into its sticky trap, and then feeds on them.
Even the smallest children can guess the riddle: “Who is above us upside down?”, Because everyone knows the ability of flies to walk on any surface - the ceiling, window glass, mirrors. In this they are helped by claws and hairs on the tips of the paws (with which flies cling to the smallest unevenness of the surfaces) and the tiny little pads located there, which secrete a sticky liquid. With the help of pads, flies stick to even glass when walking, and are not afraid to fall. By the way, that is why the fly has to rub its paws all the time - it cleans them from dirt stuck to the pad. In the funny children's rhyme “The fly sat on jam, that's all the poem” reflected another fact from the life of flies - the fact that they are very fond of sweets. In general, indoor flies feed on the same as humans. But they do not feel the taste of food with their tongues, like us, but ... with their feet. On the front legs of the flies there are tiny hairs - organs of taste. Therefore, we often observe how flies rush, run around the table, sit on all the objects - they choose their food to their taste.
But catching flies running around the table is not easy. The man is only going to swing, and the fly immediately takes off and flies away. To notice our movement for the fly is not difficult. Her big bulging eyes see around 360 degrees - both in front and from behind. And they themselves consist of almost four thousand small elements - facets. Each of them sees only a part of the image, so the flies see a mosaic image made up of four thousand pieces! Suggest your child to assemble a puzzle of hexagons, as the fly collects the image of the surrounding world.
Although this way the image is not very clear, but it is color - flies can see even ultraviolet waves that people do not see. In addition, the fly perceives the image much faster than a person. For us, the change of frames in the movie merges into continuous motion at a speed of 24 frames per second. And for a fly, such a film does not fit - it will seem to her too "twitchy." To make a movie for a fly, you'll have to change frames 300 times per second! That's why our fastest movements for it are not faster than the speed of a turtle - flies always have time to dodge the arm that has thrown at them.
There is also a beautiful fairy tale by D.N. Mamin-Sibiryak "The tale of how the last fly lived was." With a general naturalism, unfortunately, it contains several erroneous facts about the life of a fly, which I will discuss separately. Here, perhaps that's all. But our housemates deserve more attention from our side. Imagine, even the number of legs at the fly for almost two thousand years was not true information! Until the 18th century, theoretical thinking and the authority of ancient scholars were considered a priority in science, and there were practically no experiments. Therefore, the false statement, made by Aristotle (according to some sources, is not the mistake of Aristotle himself, but his scribes), that scientists have taken 8 legs on faith all the time, until Karl Linney didn’t guess I found out that there are only 6 of them, like all other insects.
And just like most other insects, the housefly goes through all the necessary phases of development. Mama-fly lays about a hundred small white eggs in warm, food-rich places. Most often it is manure or rotting food. There, the testicles after a few hours turn into larvae. Fishermen know them well - they are maggots, which fish perfectly bite on. The larvae live in the same place where they were born. and grow very fast. With a favorable temperature and humidity, they grow in 3-4 days, reaching a size of about 1 cm and have time to shed three times - to replace the close skin. After that, they look for cooler and darker places, sometimes buried in the ground. And there they turn into a pupa (pupar) - they are covered with a hard shell, which gradually darkens until dark brown. So they lie from 3 to 18 days, until inside the pupa the larva turns into an adult organism (imago) - a familiar fly to us. After that, a fly with a special growth on the head reveals the puparia and crawls into the light. After 10 days, the fly becomes fully adult and can lay new eggs. I suggest children do this task: in the pictures to find all the phases of the development of a fly and connect them with appropriate numbers. Because of this speed of development and fertility, the offspring of a fly alone in its short life can reach a trillion, i.e., 1 billion, flies. It's good that they have so many enemies and not all of them survive. After all, the main danger posed by flies is known even to children - flies spread the infection. Eating both in human houses and in places of waste accumulation, flies bring a huge amount of harmful microbes to our house. On a fly, scientists find up to 6 million microorganisms and 25 million in their intestines. Bacillus of typhoid and paratyphoid fever, dysentery bacillus, cholera vibrio, tubercle bacillus, anthrax spores, diphtheria, and worms eggs were found there. Therefore, I hope everyone understands why you need to wash and close food products from flies well.
The life of one fly lasts on average about a month. Here you have the first mistake made in the fairy tale about the last Mamin-Sibiryak fly, in which the fly lived a whole year. In fact, for the year is replaced from nine to twenty generations of indoor flies. Their lives are mainly in our homes. A housefly does not occur in the wild anymore, once its ancestors began to live with a person, and now it cannot exist without him (this is a so-called synanthropic organism). This is the answer to Serezha’s first question - the house of the fly in the same place as ours. Flies are day insects - they fly and feed during the day, and sleep at night, usually sitting on the ceiling for this, where the air is warmer. The life span of an individual fly strongly depends on the ambient temperature. It is optimal as we have in the room 23-25 degrees. Therefore, we observe the maximum number of flies in the summer, with the onset of autumn they begin to die from cold and disease. Many have noticed that at the end of the summer and the beginning of autumn the flies become "biting". But this is not entirely true (this inaccuracy is also found in the fairy tale of Mamin-Sibiryak). The house flies did not bite, nor did they bite. But with the onset of cooling, another kind of flies come to the dwelling of the person - an autumn flyaway, very similar in appearance to a house fly. All summer she lives in the fields, eating blood and skin particles of domestic animals, but the cold drives her to the houses where she bites a person. With the onset of colder cold flies become sluggish, begin to look for shelter with a steady cool temperature - balconies, window frames, basements. There they are hammered into the cracks, all life processes in them freeze, and they hibernate. In this state, they can survive 5-6 months, and when warming come to life again. In addition to adult insects, their larvae and pupae flow into hibernation, and after warming they begin to develop again. Behind the window, a blizzard and blizzard, The wind blows in the gap. A fly sits on the window, Thinks - mourns: Oh, if I would wear felt boots, A small fur coat, A little cap, A warm shirt Yes, woolen pants-
I would live to spring!
And in conclusion, I suggest you play a classic game on the development of attention and spatial orientation. The game is suitable for children and adults of any age, just need to change the number of cells, depending on the capabilities of the player. So, on a piece of paper you need to draw (and let the more “advanced” players just imagine in your mind) the playing field, for example, 5x5 squares. In the middle of the field, place a card with the image of a fly, or place some small object. One of the players turns his back to the field and tells the leader where the fly went (you can walk one space in any direction, but you cannot return to the previous position), and the leader moves the fly according to the player’s words. The goal of the game is to prevent the fly from moving beyond the playing field as long as possible. Then the players change places.
I hope Serezha liked my answer 🙂 And so that I could answer your questions, send them to me by mail tavika2000 @ yandex.ua (remove spaces) marked "Club Pochemuchek." You can see the archive of past issues of the “Club of Pochemuchek” HERE.
Other posts on the topic of "insects" can be found in my HERE: self-made book about the butterfly, Field observations and insect traps, "Three questions about butterflies in the Club Why", "Which ants are useful and which are dangerous", "Pond on the windowsill" , Insects from natural material, Butterflies from autumn leaves, “Why flies do not fall?”, Balance toy “Butterfly”, Insects from beads.
Materials on the topic:
Fly Tsokotukha. Moscow Society of Nature Testers. (Http://www.moip.msu.ru/?p=1183) Flies. Perm regional center of disinfectology (http://pkcd.ru/vred//muhi) Flies. Encyclopedia "Around the World" (http: //www.vokrugsveta.
com / encyclopedia / index.php? title =% D0% 9C% D1% 83% D1% 85% D0% B8) About the flies. The world of insects. (http://mir-nasekomyh.ru/muhi/o-muhah.html)
The most dangerous insect in the world. Zooportal (http: //www.zooportal.
All about flies and mosquitoes
Mosquitoes - flying insects, sucking the blood of people and animals. They are the main carrier of malaria and other pathogens of infectious diseases.
Males feed on plant sap, and Females feed on plant sap and blood of people and animals. Up to 3 mg of blood is absorbed at one time. The fight against mosquitoes is carried out in two directions - preventive and extermination.
In carrying out each of the directions used insecticides.
Why don't mosquitoes die in the rain? The mass of a raindrop is many times the mass of a mosquito. This factor, as well as the hairs on the entire surface of the body, lead to a very small impulse transmission from the drop to the mosquito, which gives insects the ability to survive in the rain.
Another important factor is that the collision occurs in the air, and not on a fixed surface.
When a drop hits a mosquito, two scenarios are possible: if the blow is not in the center, the insect rotates a little and flies farther, otherwise the drop will briefly drag the mosquito behind itself, but the drop is released quite quickly.
A source: www.youtube.com
Housefly spread across the globe. In nature, there are about 70 species of flies. Most flies eat food, food waste. In search of food and places for laying eggs, house flies repeatedly fly from the street to the room and back.
Flying with human excretions for household goods, food products, getting into milk, water, flies, seed them with pathogenic microorganisms. In some cases, flies cause a mias-introduction and stay of the larvae of flies in the tissues and cavities of the animal organism of the vertebrate host, including man.
The fight against flies includes the following activities:
- observance of the sanitary and hygienic regime in the adjacent territory,
- destruction of larvae and pupae in the places of their development,
- housing protection from flying flies,
- destruction of flying flies.
Found that domestic flies usually live where they were born, but there may be cases when flies can carry the wind up to 45 kilometers.
Summary
- What flies eat?
- How are flies born?
- How does a fly walk on the ceiling?
- Why flies rub their feet on the foot?
- Fly - a spreader of bacteria
- Slide 3
Because of its tiny size (1000 adult flies weigh 25-30 g), an ordinary housefly does not need a lot of food and therefore will find enough food for itself anywhere.
The common opinion that house flies bite before a thunderstorm is incorrect. Just in these cases, houseflies are confused with other types of flies, such as desert flies or dung flies. These flies are blood-sucking, they bite people.
Houseflies do not eat solid food because they have nothing to chew on. The fly's mouth is adapted only for the absorption of liquid food. The role of the “tongue” is performed by the proboscis resembling the trunk of an elephant. It is also split in two at the end, and these channels act as tubes through which liquid food is absorbed.
But, if indoor flies do not bite, why then are they considered so dangerous to humans? The fact is that the paws with pads and the body of flies are covered with protruding hairs, and sticky mucus envelops their tongue. This means that dust and dirt constantly adheres to the fly.
And since house flies look for food everywhere, including garbage and sewage, there can be bacteria in the dirt and dust adhering to the fly that causes various diseases that go to our food when the fly lands on it and get along with the food inside the human body.
Everyone knows that flies are carriers of infection. The fly is born and spends most of its life near waste and other places favorable for the development of bacteria. In fact, this wet decaying matter is the most optimal breeding ground for flies.
Here the female lays white eggs (about 1.2 mm in size), from which thin, worm-like, legless larvae appear. This is the "nourishing" stage of the life of the fly. Five or six days later, the skin of the larva thickens and becomes brownish, and the life of the fly enters the resting stage: the larva becomes a pupa.
After another 5-6 days, an adult fly appears from the shell of the pupa.
Another 10 days later the fly mates, and after a while the female lays from 100 to 150 eggs!
Not all types of flies breed like house flies. Some carry eggs in themselves and give birth to live larvae, and some species lay eggs that are already at the pupal stage.
Due to the fact that flies spread diseases, people constantly struggle with them. It is best to kill flies in winter or early spring. In this cold time, flies hide in dark warm corners and are very hungry all the time, so they are easy to catch and kill.
For all its harmfulness, the fly is an amazing creature. The usual small housefly has two large brown eyes, each of which, in turn, consists of a thousand lenses. These eyes are called "complex". In addition to them, on the top of the head the flies have three more “simple” eyes, looking straight up and visible only in a magnifying glass.
Slide 19
- The palpi (or antennae) of the housefly are used as organs of smell, and not as organs of touch. Antennae are able to detect odors from a distance.
The mouth of a fly is formed from an organ that we are accustomed to consider as the tongue, but in this insect all parts of the mouth are gathered together into a long proboscis, through which the fly sucks the juice. The body of the fly is divided into three parts: the head, the chest and the abdomen.
Behind the wings are two small protuberances that allow the fly to balance in flight.
- Three pairs of legs are attached to the striped breast. Each leg is divided into five parts, the last of which is the foot.
- The fly walks on two claws located on the bottom of the foot.
Sticky pads under these claws allow the fly to walk on the ceiling with great ease, or anywhere else upside down!
- Did you know that the whole life of a fly passes within a radius of 100 m from the place where it was born?
Already accustomed to consider the flies in the house an annoying hindrance. They make an annoying buzz, they annoy you when they start crawling through your body. For centuries, the fly was considered ... just an annoying irritant.
And only in the twentieth century, a man suddenly found out that such a seemingly innocent fly is one of his worst enemies.
It was discovered that flies spread bacteria that can kill millions of people every year!
When you see a fly rubbing its paws together, this means that it cleans them, removing from them what fell on them, different debris.
But how dangerous this garbage can be! These can be typhoid, tuberculosis, dysentery bacteria. Flies collect these bacteria in various wastes and impurities.
Then, if they suddenly sit down on our food, these bacteria will get into it, and we can get an infection.
Slide 27
- If you look at a fly in a magnifying glass, you can see that the fly’s body is not at all smooth. Her entire body, antennae and legs are covered with rearing hairs. The fly's tongue is also covered with sticky liquid.
This means that from almost any place where the fly sits, it collects dirt that clings to its body, legs, tongue.
Each of the three pairs of legs has claws and two hairy pads - so much that can stick to them! By the way, the adhesive liquid produced in the fly pads allows her to walk up the ceiling or on any other surface upside down. Slide 29
Знаете ли вы, что муха — одно из древнейших насекомых? Найдены окаменелые остатки мух, которым миллионы лет. Избавимся ли мы когда-нибудь от мух совсем? Единственно, что мы можем сделать, это помешать их размножению. И если это будет сделано, то санитарное состояние всего мира значительно улучшится!
Где и как зимуют комары?
Известно, что самки-комары в среднем могут жить от 114 до 119 дней с учетом того, что условия для их существования будут благоприятными, а именно: температура воздуха должна держаться в пределах 10—15 °С. Чем выше температура воздуха, тем короче жизнь у комарихи. Male mosquitoes, regardless of external factors, live only about 19 days. It should be noted that exactly as long as the warm season lasts, female mosquitoes can live.
But there are some types of mosquitoes that hibernate. Mosquitoes are found in the water in winter, and that is where their life begins. In winter, mosquitoes live in other forms, in eggs, larvae and pupae. The female lays eggs in reservoirs with stagnant water, where they develop further. From the moment of birth until the mosquito becomes an adult, capable of flying, it takes only nine or fourteen days. Adult individuals spend their entire lives, namely summer and autumn, on land. Then all the male mosquitoes die, and the female mosquitoes (and not all) go to the reservoirs to wait out the winter, and in the spring lay eggs for the birth of a new life.
Where and how flies winter?
Where mosquitoes hibernate is found out, but where do flies wait out the cold time? Flies, unlike mosquitoes that have outlived their summer, really hibernate, or more precisely, this process is called anabiosis. It is known that the life span of an adult fly is about a month, but many insects of this subspecies are able to live much longer. For example, a fly that hibernates can survive for six months or more. With the onset of the first cold weather, flies are slaughtered in various slots, window frames and other secret places, where during the entire winter period a cool, even temperature stays. In such rooms they winter in a state of hibernation.
Not only adult flies are capable of wintering, but also the larvae that they lay the day before. When the first rays of the sun penetrate into the room where the flies sleep, the insects come to life, and the larvae and pupae continue their development. Everyone knows the expression: walks sleepy, like a fly. Indeed, when the fly awakens after a long hibernation, it first walks, precisely like a sleepy one, staggering from one side to the other. After some time, the insects are mastered and begin to live a new spring-summer life.
