- There are many species of flies. Despite this fact flies generally find mates the same way. Fruit flies for instance use their olfactory (nose) to detect scents with 61 odor receptors in their brain. These flies like many others use scents to determine where other flies might be on food sources. Male flesh flies use their sense of sight to spot mates while flying. Flesh flies have high-resolution parts of their compound eye in males and use these to look for females with their heads on a swivel while flying. Most flies however, find mates around good sources of food. Good sources of food are usually damp, mushy decaying organic matter such as excrement or rotting food.
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Entomologists have found that flies such as fruit flies typically mate and breed on fruit and food that is like that of which they grew up around. For instance female fruit flies will look for males on specific fruit trees like an apple tree. This means that the female flies that do this mate with male flies that generally consumed this type of fruit as well; even when overlapping with other fly territory footprints in an area of the same species. After mating, females lay their eggs in or near plentiful food sources that consist of decaying organic matter. Flies can only drink so when food is in solid form they regurgitate on it to moisten the surface and begin the decomposition of the material. After the liquefying process they drink the nutrients back in. Females can lay anywhere between 100 to 150 eggs at a time.
- Since eggs laid by flies can hatch after a day of two and so many eggs can be laid by a female at a time, this makes the reproductive rate of flies astronomical if not quickly controlled. Females can mate repeatedly after laying eggs as well making each fly able to complete the reproductive process several times within their average 3-week life span. Flies can live up to 3 months in cooler weather and survive by staying near food sources and water. After eggs hatch the larva stage begins when flies become to what is known by most as maggots. The maggots wake up hungry and consume food continuously until they get to what is known as the pupa stage. During the pupa stage of a fly's life the maggot discontinues eating and ventures away from the hatch site. Metamorphosis takes place once again as the maggot pupates by forging itself into a harder medium and enclosing itself in a brownish shell where it transforms into an adult fly.
