365 Urban Species. #328: Housefly

[urbpan]

Photos by urbpan. A fastidious little animal cleans up, after being manhandled in a plastic bag to be photographed.

Urban species #238: Housefly Musca domestica

Like other animals with the common name "house-" or the scientific name "domestica," the housefly is found almost exclusively in and around buildings. Where the housefly lived before there were houses (or more importantly, stables) is lost in prehistory; houseflies have lived alongside humans since before we kept track of such things. It was known to live among us when it was first given a scientific name by Linnaeus in 1758. They may originally be from Africa, but in any case seem to be tropical animals; As with some other tropical animals, like American cockroaches, they survive in the artificial tropics that we provide in our heated buildings. Houseflies are omnivorous scavengers, feeding on anything moist and organic. Their mouthparts are not built for chewing, but rather for mopping up. Most food is not moppable, so they vomit their digestive juices onto what they want to eat, transferring bacteria from the last thing they ate. In some places, such as poultry houses and crowded tropics, they are serious disease vectors. Their eggs are laid in food sources, which in rare cases includes open wounds. More often their young are found having hatched in particularly ripe garbage. Baby flies are an indication that the trash needs to be taken out more often.

Comments

[kryptyd.livejournal.com]

Cool! I always like to take a bit of time to think about the creatures who are always around.

Flaunting my favorite new term:

[anarqueso.livejournal.com]

Baby flies = disco rice.

Re: Flaunting my favorite new term:

[anarqueso.livejournal.com]

Also, I draw pictures of flies as often as I can. I like their little stick legs legs legs, legs legs legs.

[wirrrn.livejournal.com]

Hey,

Keen pics! Love flies of all types... My favourite is probably the Human Bot(Dermatobia hominis) one of the few parasites that has evolved to prey on humans exclusively...

[ndozo.livejournal.com]

I've heard that, under certain conditions, maggots in open wounds can be beneficial because they eat the dead tissue but leave healthy tissue intact, which helps prevent infections. Do you think houseflies have an essential role in the food chain? I mean if I ever did manage to kill every fly in the world, would we be better or worse off?

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

I don't think it would be good to drive any species to extinction. I can't speak to what exactly would happen if every housefly in the world was gone--there are lots of other creatures that feed on moist organic matter. Probably without flies, there would be a lot more mold and bacteria around.

The urban ecosystem is a new invention--house mice, houseflies, house centipedes, cockroaches, various weeds, etc. all live together in these highly artificial circumstances. Are they in equilibrium? who's to say?

Theraputic use of maggots was described in the comments to another post, but I can't find which one (amazingly, not in one of the other fly posts). Pretty interesting stuff!