these flies should get a room

Spotted another pair of houseflies mating on the Raphidophora celatocaulis (Shingle Plant). This was taken with my Canon 7D and 100mm Macro lens. You can read more about houseflies in a previous post .

Anyway, I chanced upon a very interesting website called the Amazing Flygun Fly . It lists out everything you never really wanted to know about flies. I have reproduced some of the more interesting facts below.

1. There are 120,000 species of flies, ranging in size from 1/20th of an inch to 3 inches;

2. Flies are the only insect to have 2 wings - all others have 4;

3. After studying 300,000 flies, researchers Dr Yao and Dr Yuan of China concluded that your average house fly carries 2 million bacteria on its body
House flies' feet are 10 million times more sensitive to the taste of sugar than the human tongue;

4. House flies walk upside down using glue-oozing toe pads;

5. To land upside down on the ceiling, flies grab it with their front legs and then somersault the rest of their body over;

6. A fly beats its wings 200 times a second, 3 times faster than a hummingbird;

7. A new born bush fly can start mating when it is 3 days old;

8. The favourite colour of house flies is red, followed by orange, black, violet, green, blue, white and yellow;

9. The sex of a bush fly can be determined by the distance between its eyes ( female eyes are wider apart);

10. A fly can travel 300 times the length of its body in one second - a jet travelling at the speed of sound only travels 100 times its length
There are more insects in one square mile of rural land than human beings on the whole planet;

11. Flies can carry typhoid, cholera, diarrhoea, amoebic dysentery, T.B, anthrax, gangrene, bubonic plague, leprosy, scarlet fever and yellow fever;

12. Flies vomit on food before eating it, so as to soften the meal up - you don't need us to tell you that fly vomit swarms with bacteria;

13. Flies defecate every 4-5 minutes;

14. Flies don't bite or sting … they stab;

15. A Fly's vision is only sharp for 24-36 inches;

16. Despite having 4000 lenses in each eye, flies have bad vision, but are good at detecting movement - move slowly and they don't see you as a threat;

17. Flies jump up and backwards when taking off, so if you swipe at them from behind they will generally jump straight into your palm;

18. If a house fly spots a group of flies, he will join them;

19. The quantity and type of maggots and flies in a decomposing corpse can help a forensic entomologist estimate the time of death fairly accurately'

20. Fly maggots only eat dead flesh, so specially bred sterile ones are sometimes used medically to heal septic wounds more quickly and effectively than conventional methods. The maggots devour the infected parts and leave the healthy tissue alone.