HWN Suggests

In defense of flies. Yes, really

Flies are annoying, especially on warm weekends spent outdoors. They land on us and our food, they buzz in our ears, and some of them bite. Mosquitos are a kind of fly and they transmit some of the world’s deadliest pathogens. But consider for a minute that you may not really know flies. Or rather, the flies you likely do know — the house flies, the mosquitos, the gnats — are just a tiny, tiny fraction of an enormous group of insects that is, on the whole, quite wonderful. It also supports our very existence. No, a fly didn’t write this. Flies do, however, have advocates among humans, and recently, one got to me.

read full article

Featured

 Trillions of Flies Can’t All Be Bad

The world’s flies do much more than annoy us. Pollinating plants, cleaning up carcasses, swabbing drains — flies are part of every strand of the web of life.

Articles of Interest

What do flies think about?

You could be forgiven for thinking the humble fruit fly is a brainless drone, programmed only to fly around your kitchen in search of the bin. However, UQ research is revealing there are more similarities between our minds and those of fruit flies than you might have imagined.

Another reason to hate flies: they could be spreading antibiotic-resistant germs

How much are flies contributing to the antibiotic-resistance problem? No one knows. But flies might not be the only insects passing microbes around. Some researchers have found antibiotic-resistant bacteria in bees, moths, beetles, and bedbugs. Ravens and crows, too.

Disease transmission by flies

It has long been known that flies are insects of public health importance. It is estimated that flies may be responsible for transmitting up to 65 different disease organisms. Some fly species also lay eggs on live animals and humans, and the emerging larvae cause a wound in which they feed, creating pain, illness and distress.

Flies and Infectious Disease

While Crumbine did not carry a fly swatter in his hand at all times (as some supposedly thought), he was widely known for being “the nation’s most relentless worker in public health” whose “campaigns and inspirations have jarred the personal habits of every adult in the world.”In some ways, the “swat the fly” campaign was only the tip of the metaphorical iceberg of Crumbine’s storied efforts to reduce the spread of communicable illness. In this regard, an especially formative event in Crumbine’s life took place on a train in 1907.

Flies as Vectors of Parasites Potentially Inducing Severe Diseases in Humans and Animals

Many fly species feed regularly on feces or their larvae develop inside it. Therefore, it is not astonishing that parasites in the form of durable cysts or eggs or even as fragile trophozoites may be found in fly feces or attached to their legs and bodies. These parasites may then be transported to humans and animals or to their food, from where the parasites may enter (via oral uptake) the inner organs and can induce an infection.

Flies in Hospitals Are Full of Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria

A study of seven hospitals in the U.K. found the bacteria in 90 percent of flies, though they are unlikley to spread the infections.

How bug ‘wranglers’ help document the lives of flies, dung beetles, and more

The new documentary series A Real Bug's Life explores how some of Earth's smallest animals get by.

Making Food From Flies (It's Not That Icky)

Basically, the way Courtright sees it, these larvae solve two enormous problems at once: the waste problem and the food supply problem. Now this is not a totally new idea. Craig Sheppard, an insect specialist now retired from the University of Georgia, has been doing experiments with black soldier flies for a couple of decades now. He's turned the little larvae loose on animal manure. They clean it up quite nicely. And over the years, he and his colleagues have talked to some companies about how to turn this into a real business.

Research: Of Flies & Fevers

The studies abroad cover the whole gamut of diseases and the agents that transmit them to man. At Osaka University Dr. Hideo Kikkawa has painstakingly bred 30 different mutant strains of houseflies to find out how some of them become resistant to insecticides.

Scientists warn common flies pose greater health risk than mosquitoes because they vomit on food

Trigger warning: don’t read this when you’re eating. The common house fly could pose a health risk if it lands on your food.

Shoo fly, don’t bother me: Australia’s most common flies and how to keep them away this summer

Fly season is here and there is buzzing in the air – and in our homes. So who are these curious insects and how should we feel about them?

Should I throw away food once a fly has landed on it?

House flies don’t bite. Unlike mosquitoes that transmit pathogens of human health importance in their saliva, house flies transmit pathogens on their feet and body. As well as leaving behind pathogen-filled footprints, the flies leave their poop on our food. They vomit too.

Spotted Lanternflies Are Back. You Should Still Kill Them

The Department of Agriculture strongly encourages people to stomp, squash or swat lanternflies when they see them. Officials have been recruiting residents along the Eastern Seaboard to join the effort for years. That’s because while spotted lanternflies are harmless to humans, they are an invasive species that can cause widespread economic harm, primarily by damaging plants.

Study Says It’s Very Bad to Eat Food Flies Have Landed On

If you grew up watching the same cartoons that I did, you know that when you ask the waiter what a fly is doing in your soup, he’s supposed to squint intensely, then shrug and say, “The backstroke.” But, according to scientists, the more accurate response would be “The backstroke, and also spreading even more disgusting bacteria than we previously thought possible.”

The Medical Uses of Maggots

Fly larvae help scientists understand and treat diseases.

The Wisdom of the Fly Crowds

Few animals have been more thoroughly studied than the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. Scientists have sequenced its genome, tracked its development from single cell to fully-formed fly, and teased apart the neurons in its brain. They know this fly at the most intimate level, but for all that knowledge, they’ve been operating under one false assumption: that it’s a loner. Drosophila is classified as a solitary species.

There Is So Much You Don’t Know About Being a Fly

So it comes as something of a revelation, then, to learn by way of Jonathan Balcombe’s latest book, “Super Fly: The Unexpected Lives of the World’s Most Successful Insects,” that far from operating on autopilot, flies exhibit discerning social lives, idiosyncratic behavior and sensitivities to stimuli that are not dissimilar to our own.

Those Pesky House Flies May Actually Improve Our Health

The house fly (Musca domestica) has a genome that could actually give scientists insight into pathogen immunity, helping humans live healthier lives, researchers write in the journal Genome Biology. And it’s all because of their, well, gross-factor. Since the house fly lives on animal and human waste, according to Science Daily, “[t]hey are an important species for scientific study because of their roles as waste decomposers and as carriers of over 100 human diseases, including typhoid, tuberculosis and worms.”

Why it’s so hard to swat flies, according to science

Flies evade your swatting thanks to sophisticated vision and neural shortcuts.

‘Super Fly’ Review: Respect For a Reviled Insect

Here are some suggestive fly facts. In terms of “diversity and sheer numbers,” Mr. Balcombe writes, the fly’s success takes on “celestial proportion.” Some researchers estimate that there are 17 quadrillion flies on the planet. One British fly expert believes that for each human there are about 17 million flies. There are 160,000 known species of flies, and that’s probably “only scratching the surface.” Flies, which have been around as long as humans, exist on every continent, including Antarctica. A “handful of species have colonized the oceans—a habitat otherwise unreached by insects.”

Resources

6 Types of Fly Bites and Treatment

Here's everything you need to know about itchy, sometimes-painful fly bites.