Re: Fly

Dear Dov Vogel,

From a strictly human-centered standpoint, it's hard to find a positive side to houseflies. Houseflies (Musca domestica) carry and spread disease organisms, so it's best not to allow them to land on your food if you can help it. Flies can also spread disease in nonhuman animals, so there's reason to feel a bit grouchy about the abundance of the little creatures.

Most of the web information pertaining to flies has to do with agriculture, since these animals have significant financial impacts on poultry and dairy production. I've listed below several URLs providing fly facts and pesticide and trapping information.

For another view of flies, try the sites linked to university entomology departments. There you'll learn more about fly behavior and natural history, not just ways to get rid of flies.

This brings me to your second question-- I'm quite a fan of many natural enemies of flies, so perhaps one of the 'purposes' of flies is to feed spiders, frogs, toads, birds, bats, mantids, and other creatures. From the flies' perspective, it's a good thing they reproduce so efficiently, since so many other animals hunt houseflies for lunch.

For more information about flies and other insects, check out these links:

http://www.ex.ac.uk/~gjlramel/front.html (Great educational site!)
http://www.heatersworld/bugworld (Another good ed site--lots of entomology)
http://www.ext.vt.edu/departments/entomology/factsheets;housemag.html (About house fly maggots)
http://hammock.ifas.ufl.edu/txt/fairs/8926 (Fact sheet on house flies)
http://www.uky.edu/Agriculture/Entomology/entfacts/livestc/ef506.htm (How far can house flies fly?)
http://www.mccloudservices.com/PestFacts/HouseFly.html (More fly facts)

Thanks for your interest!

Ruth