| FLY |
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PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS
The most common fly is the house fly. It is black and
about 1/4 inch long. The sex of a house fly can be determined by the distance
between their eyes (females are wider). Also, the female is usually larger than
the male.
Its body is covered with fine hairs and bristles which readily pick up dirt
particles.
The length of time from egg to adult for the housefly is from 1 to 6 weeks,
depending mainly on temperature. Other flies are similar.
In urban areas houseflies usually are found in human, pet, or horse feces, and
in garbage.
There are three stages of flies; egg, larvae, and adult.
Flies can live 2 to 3 days without food.
Flies vomit on their food before eating it so as to soften it. The house fly
excretes and regurgitates wherever it comes to rest.
Both the male and female species of the stable fly use their proboscis to pierce
the skin (including human skin) and suck blood. Stable fly is more associated
with non-human animal excrement, and decaying seashore weeds.
REPRODUCTION
Flies lay their eggs in manure and decayed vegetable
matter. These are good places to start when controlling them.
A female deposits 75 to 150 eggs per batch. She may lay 5 to 6 batches at
intervals of several days between each batch.
Fly eggs are small (only about 1/25" long), white, and are laid in the moist
organic matter where the larvae will live. The eggs usually hatch in less than a
day. To pupae, the full grown larvae sometimes move to a nearby drier place, or
into the ground pupae. The newly-emerged adult, however, cannot fly until its
wings have dried and expanded, and during this time it sometimes is called a
"crawler".
The length of time from egg to adult for the housefly is from 1 to 6 weeks,
depending mainly on temperature. Other flies are similar.
Female flies lay about 200 to 2,000 eggs per lifetime. The green bottle fly,
however averages 2,000 to 3,000.
Fermenting, fresh horse manure is a favorite breeding place of the house fly.
This manure must be less than one day old to be attractive to the egg laying
adult.
DISEASE CARRIERS
Flies are a disease carrying insect.
House flies have been shown to carry the disease organisms causing typhoid
fever, cholera, summer diarrhea, dysentery, tuberculosis, anthrax, opthalmia as
well as parasitic worms.
Sanitation is important for complete control.
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