How long does an ordinary fly live in nature and at home

Good day! This year seems to have become a kind of benefit for flies of different sizes and varying degrees of harmfulness.

The fight against them was a real test. They crawled out of various cracks, and how many more I found dead corpses in the most unexpected places!

It’s even scary to imagine how many birth cycles they had during this season. Do you want to know how long an ordinary fly lives? What conditions are favorable for their intensive reproduction? Now I will sign everything in detail.

How conditions affect the life cycle of flies

Flies are not the most tenacious insects that a person can meet in his home. The average life expectancy of flies is only 20-25 days and largely depends on the influence of the environment.

The most favorable conditions for the existence of insects are created at an air temperature of 23-25 ​​degrees and a humidity of not more than 80%. In this case, individuals of flies can live up to 60-80 days if they die by their death.

With decreasing air temperature, the activity of insects decreases and they enter the "hibernation" mode, in which they can successfully exist before the onset of heat. That is why people are wondering where these pests come from in the winter.

Given these circumstances, one could assume that flies as a species would long ago cease to exist if they did not have the opportunity to multiply so rapidly. One female in her short life can lay up to 2000 eggs, which in 10-14 days turn into adults and have the ability to reproduce.

At the first detection of these insects, they should be destroyed, otherwise within a month the number of parasites will be so large that it will be very difficult to remove them.

How many flies of different species live?

The average life span of a fly is small - only 2-4 weeks, sometimes a little more if the conditions of existence are as favorable as possible. But during its short life, this insect manages to breed several generations of offspring, so sometimes it seems that the same individuals live unimaginably long.

Musca domestica, home fly

Flying insects of this species live only where a person lives, or in the maximum proximity to him. In the wild, almost never occur. In Russia there are 2 subspecies of house flies - common and southern.

The home fly goes through several stages of development:

1. Egg. It develops from 8 to 50 hours.
2. Larva (maggot). Sheds three times before turning into a chrysalis. This takes her from 3 to 25 days.
3. Dolly. The insect goes through this stage in about 3-6 days.
4. Imago (adult insect). Lives from 2 weeks to a month, sometimes up to 2 months. 36 hours after the transition from the pupal stage to the adult, the fly is capable of breeding. During her life, she lays about 2,000 eggs.

In addition, with a decrease in temperature, adults, larvae and pupae are able to fall into hibernation, additionally living in a dream for several more months. Under favorable conditions, an insect of this species continuously reproduces all year round.

Autumn Lighters

Autumn lighters, like Musca domestica, belong to synanthropic species (coexist with humans), although there have been cases of their reproduction in places of accumulation of wild animals.

The population of autumn wenches reaches its peak by the end of summer - the beginning of autumn. The life expectancy of an adult autumn lighter is 3–8 weeks, but flies of this species are also capable of hibernating.

Meat and carrion flies

Meat and carrion flies are also easy to confuse with housefly, they are similar in appearance, but the housefly is inferior to its wild relatives in size. The life of adult meat flies is very short - usually only 5-7 days. Their carrion relatives live up to 3 weeks.

Dung Fly (Scathophagidae)

This insect lays larvae in manure, so it can often be found in cows. She rarely flies into an apartment, and by sheer chance, since there is nothing attractive for a person in her home. Shelf life is about 30 days.

Drosophila

Drosophila flies (fruit flies, wine flies) number about 1,500 species, among which there are wild and synanthropic ones. These small harmless insects often settle in the apartment and garden. Life expectancy is 3-4 weeks (not counting the time spent on the development of eggs, larvae and pupae).

Scyarides - flower flies

Sciarides, they are detritus or fruit mosquitoes. Scyaride is often confused with Drosophila due to its small size. In everyday life, owners of greenhouses and indoor plants often encounter them. Adult sciarides live for several weeks, and development from an egg to an adult takes approximately the same time.

How many flies live and why do they rub their paws

All of the facts below will apply to an ordinary housefly.

general information

Age. In fact, flies do not live very long, their average lifespan is from those to four weeks. If the temperature is kept at a level of 20-25 degrees and there is enough food, then some individuals can not die within two months. We are talking, of course, about the imago - an adult insect!

Weight. Many people care about the body weight of this insect, so the second question we will answer is how much the fly weighs.

According to many sources of information, in order to gain a whole gram, you will need to catch at least 70 adults. Thus, the weight of each of them will be equal to an average of 14.29 milligrams.

However, if it discards external factors and allows the flies to breed freely, then the offspring of one female can be about 75 tons per year.

About nutrition. To the question of what the flies eat, the answer is simple - almost everything that has an organic basis. However, they are gourmets and prefer sweets.

They eat liquid food most easily, because the fly’s mouth is a proboscis, unable to gnaw food.When flies have to be content with solid organics, they first soften it with saliva, and then absorb it.

The taste buds of the fly are on its feet, therefore, crawling over the products, the fly tastes them that way.

It turns out this is a standard hygiene procedure. Flies, flying from sewage to food, pick up a variety of garbage on their legs and, of course, get dirty. Here, in order to clean the paws of dirt adhering to them, the flies wipe their paws one on top of the other, and thus are cleaned.

First, they rub the forelimbs, then they themselves clean the head, and then the hind wings.

Now to the question of how the fly hangs on the ceiling.. Many authors believe that insects cling to the smallest protrusions of the surface with barely visible simple eyes hooks on their legs. But this is the wrong point of view, how else to explain the tenacity of flies on perfectly smooth surfaces, for example, glasses.

If a fly decides to start from a ceiling or wall perpendicular to the surface, like a rocket, then the tensile force formed by this adhesive composition will not allow them to do this. Therefore, insects are forced to fly along a tangent, similar to an intercontinental airliner.

About brains. Now let's think about this topic: does the fly have a brain. It would seem why he is such a small creature. However, in the head of the insect there are about three hundred thousand neurons, which, of course, is nothing compared to our twenty billion such cells, but still ...

This amount of active cells is enough for a small creature to actively work and fulfill its most urgent needs.

About the eyes. Looking at the eyes of a fly, many are interested in their eyesight. In fact, we do not see the usual proteins and pupils inherent in mammals, and often we can not understand how the fly sees.

Then, the tiny fly brain, discussed in the previous chapter, connects pieces of information together, and the fly presents the whole picture surrounding it.

Each sector of the eye is responsible for its own part of the world. Such an arrangement of the eyes allows the fly to see the picture 360 ​​degrees, moreover, in a color image. And the optimal frame change for her is not 24 per second, like a person’s, but as many as 300.

Oh heart. Does the fly have a heart, and in what egg is that needle hidden that will kill her as the famous Koshchei? In this sense, as in humans, flies are heartless. But still, the organ that moves their blood through a single direct artery also exists in these insects.

This phenomenon is explained by the fact that, unlike mammals, the blood of insects does not carry out the function of oxygen delivery to the most important parts of the body. Roughly speaking, flies breathe skin, not lungs.

About Mushin's Dream. An interesting question, do flies sleep, shocked even scientists. Regardless of the structure of the brain, insects are also forced to rest. Moreover, it was found out that young flies that have just hatched from a chrysalis sleep stronger and longer than their relatives who have lived a couple of weeks.

Tests even showed that coffee acts on these insects as encouraging as it does on humans due to its antihistamine properties.

Generation, or life cycle

Now let's talk about the development of a fly from a scientific point of view. The life cycle of a fly follows the path of complete transformation of insects. The full cycle of insect development includes four stages: an egg, a larva, a pupa, and an imago.

Egg. Flies can lay up to one hundred and fifty eggs at a time. During its short life, the female is able to make more than six egg-laying. It is also interesting how the flies lay their eggs.

Larvae. The eggs are incubated very quickly, literally the next day small larvae appear - maggots. From an egg, they appear very tiny, but in the process of development they can grow more than eight hundred times.

The entire process of development of maggots lasts a little more than a week under favorable conditions: an optimum temperature of 20-25 degrees Celsius and high humidity of the air and substrate in which they develop.

Maggots are highly sought after by fishing enthusiasts, but they are small near a housefly and are poorly suited for hooking. Usually other types of flies, the so-called meat flies, provide bait.

Caster is similar to a larva, only has a harder shell and a brownish body color. At this stage of development, the fly also spends about one week. At low temperatures, the fly larva is not able to pupate. Therefore, fishing maggot in the refrigerator can be stored for six months or more.

Imago. One week after pupation, the last stage of how the flies appear. As mentioned earlier, adults live on average about twenty-four days, and almost every two or three days they are able to lay eggs. So these same 75 tons a year turn out!

Wintering

Everyone probably wondered where the flies came from in the spring. The fact is that with the onset of autumn cold these insects are able to fall into suspended animation and spend in this state without damage to health for five to six months. In suspended animation, pupae and larvae of flies are able to tolerate cold.

Do flies bite?

People often say that with the onset of autumn cold, usually peaceful house flies become extremely bite and cause a lot of concern. It turns out that a completely different species of these insects flies into our homes - the autumn lighter.

So do not sin on the housefly, the guilt in the bites of an externally biting lighter similar to it.

How long does a regular fly last

Indoor flies are the most common insects. But, despite this, in the wild it is quite difficult to meet them. They live where there are people. Everyone knows how house flies look, but the question is, how long does a fly live, perhaps it will baffle many.

Breeding flies

The flies have a very well-developed breeding system. Theoretically, one pair of insects has the ability to create offspring in just one season, the weight of which can exceed 40 tons by autumn.

Of course, this does not happen in nature, because there are many factors that affect the life span of a fly. As a rule, individuals live about 25-30 days.

The process of breeding flies consists in laying eggs in various organic waste or in food.One female is capable of laying about 2,500 eggs during her short life. At one time in the clutch, the size of which is less than a millimeter, there are about 150 eggs.

Development process

Insect larvae appear literally one day after the female lays eggs. Their appearance resembles white thin threads. This stage of development is called "nutritious", it lasts about 5-7 days.

During this time, the larvae penetrate deep into organic waste in search of moisture and heat. It also protects them from animals and the harmful effects of sunlight.

An adult that can reproduce itself appears after about two weeks. Its size after "birth" is practically unchanged. However, the first days after their appearance, flies cannot fly - they have very weak wings.

What affects life expectancy

The most favorable conditions for the life of flies occur at an air temperature of 22 - 26 degrees. The air humidity should not exceed 80%. Under these conditions, a fly can survive 2 to 3 months, if it is not previously destroyed by humans.

With a decrease in temperature, the activity of flies decreases sharply - having entered hibernation mode, they can remain in it until spring arrives.

After all, a person has many ways to deal with them. Destruction should be dealt with immediately upon detection of flies, otherwise, given their excellent reproductive ability, it will be more difficult to get rid of them over time.

Prevention and control methods

In order to avoid flies in the house, you need to follow some rules that are available to everyone:

• The nets installed on the windows will become a serious barrier to flies.
• The trash can needs to be cleaned daily.
• Food left on the table must be covered with a lid, napkin or gauze. So it becomes inaccessible to insects.

Today, there are many simple tools to deal with flies. This is an adhesive tape, DDT, "fly agaric" and others. For example, if a fly drank liquid with poison from a container with a fly agaric, it will surely die after a short time.

The life span of a fly in an apartment

This is such a simple question that interests many. In the warm season, flies are constantly in sight of a person - on the street, in the country, in the apartment. And they are also constantly fighting them with the help of insecticides, Velcro and other means.

Under ideal conditions and in the absence of predatory insects, a fly can live up to 80 days. But, given the actions of man and the food cravings of spiders, the maximum life expectancy is about three weeks.

When the temperature decreases, the metabolism of the insect slows down, and the fly hibernates. With the onset of heat, they begin to wake up and appear as if from nowhere. In fact, when the flies get colder, they try to hide in balcony slots and other secluded places, where some of them safely winter.

Mushiny life or from and to

If we consider the full cycle of how long an ordinary fly lives from the moment of laying eggs until its death, then the picture is a little different. The female is able to lay about a hundred eggs of a characteristic oblong shape at a time (the laying of the fly is difficult to confuse with anything).

A day later, larvae emerge from the eggs, which begin to grow actively, while eating the remains of food or substances of organic origin.

Larvae try to hide deeper - where it is warm, humid and a lot of food. The sun's rays are harmful to maggots, which is also one of the reasons to leave the open air. After 25 days, the larva turns into a chrysalis, and another three days later a fly is born from it.

After 36 hours, the adult is already capable of breeding. True, at this time the insect practically does not fly, since the wings of a fly must dry.

One female is able to lay about two thousand eggs. For mating, she selects a male with the opposite genetic code. Outwardly, the female is slightly larger than the male, but it is difficult for a specialist to determine it.

How many days does Drosophila live?

The appearance of Drosophila flies suggests that fruits or vegetables began to deteriorate in the house or apartment. Of interest is the fact that Drosophila do not appear on their own. Their eggs are brought along with products from the store, and when favorable conditions (read - at the beginning of decay), they begin to develop.

At 25 ° C, the fly lives 10 days, while lowering the temperature to 18 ° C - 20 days. Under ideal conditions (a lot of food and a low temperature), a fly can live and multiply actively for about two and a half months.

How many live without food?

The question itself is meaningless - a fly cannot remain without food, unless it is placed in sterile conditions. Insects will always find food, and flies are able to consume it in liquid and solid form.

Usually the fly lives near the place where it was born, the habitat radius is about one hundred meters. The best places for breeding flies are garbage dumps, compost heaps. Rotting waste creates the most favorable environment for the reproduction of insects.

For this reason, a person actively fights insects with all available methods - close windows with nets, hang traps for flies (despite the disgusting appearance, this is one of the best means of fighting flies), install lamps with baits.

So the duration of the fly life is a very relative concept. If a person does not kill her, then either birds or spiders will catch her. But even for the allotted 20 days to it, the fly will be able to leave serious offspring.

What is the life span of flies?

Intrusive house flies annoy a person since ancient times. They belong to the synanthropic species, that is, are ecologically related to human settlements; they are not found in the wild. Once upon a time, the ancestors of the tsokotukha began to live next door to people, their current relatives can no longer exist in a different way.

In Russia, there are 2 subspecies of flies:

Housefly carries a hidden threat to humans, being a carrier of helminths and pathogens of dangerous diseases: cholera, dysentery, tuberculosis, anthrax, diphtheria. By infecting foods, insects make them dangerous to eat.

Intrusive ubiquitous insects pretty much spoil the life of mankind. Therefore, many are interested in the question: how many flies live? The insect lives on average 3 weeks, but enemies and adverse environmental conditions reduce the average duration of a fly’s life to 6-10 days.

How does reproduction occur?

Flies have many enemies, but colossal fertility saves the species from destruction.The breeding rate is amazing: a male and a female can produce offspring over the summer season, whose weight is 40 tons (in a comfortable living environment in the absence of enemies).

Throughout the year, with a favorable climate, 20 generations of insects are replaced, and during the summer period - 7-8.

In the clutch there are approximately 150 eggs; in all their lives flies lay 600-2000 pieces. For masonry, insects use rotting organic waste, manure, sewage, food.

After a day, larvae appear that resemble externally thin strings. They penetrate deep into organic waste, giving food, moisture, heat, protecting from destructive sunlight and enemies.

Developmental stages

The life cycle of a fly has several stages:

1. Egg - development lasts 8-50 hours.
2. The larva, or maggot, develops 3–25 days, 3 molts pass before becoming a chrysalis. In just a week, the size of the larva increases by 800 times.
3. Pupa - the period lasts 3-6 days. Lowering the temperature slows pupation.
4. Adult insect (imago) - lives from 10 days to one or two months. 36 hours after leaving the chrysalis, an adult is able to breed.

On average, development from an egg to an adult form of an insect lasts 20 days.

Life span

It is impossible to answer unequivocally how long an ordinary fly lives. A lot of factors influence the life span of a fly. For example, the state of the environment.

The population of house flies reaches a peak in autumn. The parasitic fungus of the empusa rescues from the dominance of insects, due to which the number of annoying insects sharply decreases. The harsh wintering conditions contribute to the extermination of the fly tribe.

When the ambient temperature drops below 10 ° C, larvae, pupae, adult fertilized individuals hibernate, experiencing winter in a state of suspended animation. In the spring, surviving females will give life to numerous new generations of flies.

Control Measures and Prevention

It is impossible to ignore the presence of carriers of diseases dangerous to humans in the house. Use available effective insect control methods:

What do we know about house flies?

An ordinary housefly is rightfully considered one of the very “ordinary”, so to speak, species of insects, with the prevalence of which, apart from a mosquito, they can compete.

Actually, we will try to find out in this review about what a housefly is, why it appears in a house, how much a fly lives, and how such a living neighbor can do harm.

View characteristics

The housefly belongs to the family of true flies. Unlike its “wild” taxon counterparts, this species can be considered endemic to human dwellings. This is really, jokingly speaking, an exclusively “domestic” insect that practically does not live in the wild.

There are two subspecies of housefly, a typical housefly and a southern housefly. The second subspecies is somewhat larger.In general, speaking about the characteristics of this type of insect, a housefly is characterized by all the main external parameters that make it difficult to confuse this family with any other taxonomic unit of the insect class.

The faceted eyes of these insects allow them to monitor the state of the environment at the widest angle, while human binocular vision is limited in this regard to only 46 degrees.

Flies, like most insects, have sexual dimorphism in favor of females, which are somewhat larger than males.

Lifestyle

The housefly, of course, is a subspecies of the ordinary wild fly, which over time has become so addicted to albeit unsafe, but so convenient and vicious cohabitation with a person that it itself branches off from its own taxon and forms a new one.

So there were house flies - regulars in kitchens, balconies, verandas and rooms.

These insects live mainly in those houses and apartments where there is always something to profit from. They are attracted by the smells of something edible, especially rotten fruits, vegetables, meat products. They have a licking-sucking apparatus, so for a person they do not represent any danger from the point of view of a bite.

The fly is an exclusively daytime insect. At night they see almost nothing and therefore sleep. In the afternoon, they are tireless in their activity.

Domestic flies reproduce very quickly and easily, and are able to create a considerable problem for the negligent owner, under favorable conditions for them, having arranged a real invasion. After all, flies appear in the home environment most often in the conditions of “sanitary liberalism” on the part of the owners, you should not forget about this.

By the way, about the life expectancy of house flies. It ranges from two weeks to a month. If no one is trying to shorten the life of a fly, the duration of the annoying parasite depends on the temperature parameters of its habitat.

Valid limits are 10-40 degrees. At lower temperatures, closer to zero, the fly begins to seek refuge for the winter. At minus degrees, the insect dies.

Why flies are dangerous for humans

Everyone knows that flies are carriers of all kinds of harmful microorganisms. We can only confirm this as a fact. The housefly is the most important and most malicious in the world carrier of many parasitic and infectious diseases.

On its paws, this annoying insect can carry pathogens of such serious diseases as:

As we can see, most of the diseases carried by flies are epidemiological in nature, which makes it even more dangerous to prevent the spread of such carriers of various infections as flies in public places, such as canteens or medical facilities.

And most importantly - perhaps the main reason for the spread of diseases, such as cholera and typhoid, are just such ordinary and well-known flies to us.

How to protect your abode?

Having thoroughly frightened the reader with the possible consequences of the invasion of these insects, we allow ourselves to give some advice on how to prevent the appearance of flies in the house.

We highlight the following points, most of which relate to basic hygiene inside the house, namely:

• release the sink from dirty dishes in time, because there is no more temptation for flies than to profit from the remnants of food on dirty plates, this is their bread and butter;
• do at least a weekly wet cleaning of the kitchen and rooms;
• in summer, a mosquito net should be placed on the windows; such a screen can solve the problem of the penetration of most insects into the apartment;
• do not leave fruits, vegetables, and even more so meat products for a long time outside the refrigerator - insects will certainly take a moment to lay down their larvae;
• Use well-known folk, mechanical and chemical means of repelling and exterminating insects.

Let us dwell in more detail on the last point. We refer to folk methods, for example, landing near the places where flies penetrate into the home zone (windows, balconies) of plants such as geraniums or tansy, the smell of which flies do not transfer to the spirit.

You can also use the good old fly swatter and flycatcher, both purchased and homemade. Adhesive tapes will also be a good tool in the fight against insects, as well as all kinds of chemicals.

In especially advanced cases, you can resort to the use of the same Dichlorvos or even more serious means, such as Karakurt. The latter, however, can only be used in street conditions, close to a private house near cesspools.

The life span of an ordinary fly

Sometimes, it seems that the flies are indestructible and live longer than the Gorynych Snake. As soon as the sun warms, how can you immediately hear its buzzing. Such a nuisance can happen if a fly from the last autumn brood remains to winter near the home.

This insect is not in vain called Musca domestica or the housefly; it can survive only in the vicinity of humans. Although, most often it is a person who stops the life cycle of an ordinary fly.

At different latitudes, the life span of a housefly may vary. The optimal conditions guaranteeing the maximum life of a fly are:

In such cases, with sufficient nutrition and the absence of dangers, the fly can survive for more than 2 months. Well, how long a fly lives in an apartment depends on the owner of the home, usually this time does not exceed three weeks.

Developmental stages

An adult insect, already 36 hours after the end of the pupation stage, is ready for reproduction. The life cycle of a fly is divided into 4 stages:

1. egg;
2. larva;
3. pupa;
4. adult or adult.

A flying, domestic pest can lay 100-150 eggs in one clutch. The number of clutches of a fly depends on the climate and the abundance of food; under favorable conditions, they can appear every 3-4 days. The total number of eggs per life cycle of a fly can reach 2000.

The very small size of the eggs does not allow us to see the clutch, so cleanliness in the house is the guarantee of the health of its inhabitants. Eggs are laid in a suitable environment - warm, nutritious, moist and inaccessible to light. Egg incubation time 1-2 days.

Before pupation, the larva moves to a dry place and forms a cocoon. In a solid cocoon, brown, the transformation of the larva into an insect begins. After 5-6 days, an adult individual is born from the pupa, for some time the fly cannot fly, its wings are still wet and weak. Well, how many days a fly will live will depend on its care.

An imago or adult fly is a small insect, usually 6-8 mm. The abdomen of the insect is yellowish, and on the chest there are 4 dark stripes. Huge faceted eyes give her a 360 ° view.

Fly Home Food

An ordinary fly has no jaws; the oral apparatus is a split proboscis. Saliva is released through solid residues through it, and after food is softened, it is absorbed. That is why it is impossible to get a bite of such an insect. The fly prefers semi-liquid or rotten food.

The sudden appearance of an insect in early spring, involuntarily leads to the thought - how many years does the fly live? The way a fly flies can be harmful to human health. The legs and abdomen, framed by hairs, gain a lot of dangerous substances and pathogenic bacteria.

In addition, microorganisms located in the stomach of the insect survive and enter its uncleaned food with its saliva. The list of dangerous diseases carried by flies is not small. Therefore - how much time a fly lives in an apartment, there is so much danger of it transmitting various kinds of infections.

Biting flies

In addition to Musca domestica, a biting fly, a lighter, often appears next to a person. Her oral apparatus is well suited for biting through her skin. Moreover, its main habitat, in the warm season, near large domestic animals. A cold snap forces her to move into homes and annoy its inhabitants.

Most often, along with the usual fly, Drosophila or flower flies - sciarids can appear in the apartment. Both of them are quite harmless and very small. Often the appearance of a meat or carrion fly. Such individuals are much larger than a regular fly and can also cause trouble.

Whatever the flying insects, it is better not to think about how many houseflies live, but to immediately begin to destroy them.