About House Flies
According to the KidzWorld website, house flies are around 1/4 inch long, gray in color and can fly at a speed of 6 miles in 24 hours. They visit sewers, garbage heaps, toilets, sinks and dumps and feed on sputum, fecal matter, discharge from wounds and decaying matter like eggs, meat and spoiled fish. House flies tend to carry germs from these things to our food items and thus prove to be one of the most deadly creatures and sources of diseases. Does this Spark an idea?
-
Life Cycle of House Flies
-
There are 4 different stages in the life of a common house fly: egg, larvae, pupa and adult. A female house fly can lay as many as 500 eggs in three to four days that are white in color and less than half inch in size. After 8 to 20 hours, maggots or larvae come out of these eggs that prefer to live in warm and moist environment. After four to 10 days, maggots enter pupa stage of life in which they develop a reddish-brown skin on their body. After passing the pupa stage, an adult house fly lives for up to 15 to 30 days. Females are usually larger in size than the males and can produce eggs after only two days of becoming an adult fly.
How do House Flies Eat?
-
House flies do not have teeth and can consume only liquid foods. This does not mean that they cannot consume solid foods. Actually, they liquefy solid foods by spitting on them and then sucking them up with their tongue that resembles a straw.
-
Heath-Related Issues
-
House flies are known to transmit around 65 different diseases among humans, including dysentery, yaws, typhoid, cholera, anthrax, poliomyelitis, leprosy, tuberculosis and tularemia. In addition to this, they also become a nuisance in a house as they keep flying around, disturbing the normal life of the family.
Preventing House Flies
-
Flies will not be able to breed in a house if there are not enough food sources available. Remove any kind of garbage, manure, weed piles, grass clippings and other decaying matter from the house and keep the dustbins tightly covered and clean. Moreover, clean the pet's waste immediately, as pet waste can attract house flies greatly. Keep flies out by using mesh screens on the windows and doors. Ensure that all gas pipes, electrical conduits and water pipes do not have any openings into your house.
Getting Rid of House Flies
-
Flyswatters, sprays, baits and fly strips are some of the methods to get rid of house flies. There can be ultraviolet light traps, baited fly traps and sticky fly traps, which will attract flies and trap them. If you are looking for a chemical-based method to get rid of flies, call a licensed pest control operator who will apply synthetic pyrethroid inside the house. There are also aerosol sprays available in the market, which are specifically designed to kill or remove flies. These sprays have pyrethrins which can kill the flies almost instantly. Be sure to follow directions carefully.
-
