You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana (Groucho Marx)
Said the spider to the fly
I'd like to be a fly on the wall at that meeting
You little maggot
"God in His Glory made the fly, and then forgot to tell us why." - Ogden Nash
Ancient dwellers in the land of Canaan chose Baal, king of the flies, as their chief god.
Ancient Egyptians felt biting flies were the symbol of Determination, Perseverance, and Valor, and gold medals in the shape of flies were presented to soldiers.
It has been calculated that if all the offspring from a single House Fly were able to mate and survive for only 5 months, the Earth would be covered completely with a 47-foot-deep layer of flies. That calculates to be about 191,010,000,000,000 flies - one hundred ninety-one trillion, ten billion flies.
A species of Bot Fly in South America does not lay its eggs on the animal its larvae will feed on. Instead, the female fly captures a female mosquito, lays an egg on the mosquito, and then releases it. The mosquito then seeks out a warm-blooded animal to feed on, the bot fly egg hatches from the warmth of this animal, and drops onto and into the skin of this host.
Many flies feed on dead animals, recycling them back to the Earth. Some species of flies may discover this food source in as little as 15 minutes after the animal dies.
The filthy House Fly tastes with its feet, which are 10 million times more sensitive to sugar than the human tongue.
The largest kind of fly is probably a "robber" fly from South America - almost 2 ½ inches long. The smallest insect may be a wasp called the Fairyfly Wasp - only 0.0067 of an inch long as the adult.
Maggot Therapy involves placing live maggots onto wounds on humans. The maggots used to feed only on dead tissues, eating away the dead skin and stimulating the healing process. This is particularly effective on severe burn victims.
This benefit of having wounds infested with living maggots was discovered on soldiers, wounded in battle, who were left in the field so long that flies laid their eggs on them. Their wounds healed more quickly than those brought into field hospitals quickly.
Many species of flies are fantastic mimics of stinging bees and wasps, and it is believed they derive protection from this appearance. Predators may be reluctant to eat an insect that looks like one that they know can sting.
Mosquito Hawks and Mosquito Eaters, praised by schoolchildren as wonderful predators of mosquitoes, actually are no such thing. Unfortunately, this is a myth. These large, leggy flies are properly called Crane Flies, and in reality, the adults often do not eat at all. Their larvae feed primarily on decaying vegetation.
Flies such as the common House Fly are known to be filthy, and to carry, on their bodies, the microscopic pathogens that cause disease. Disease pathogens such as anthrax, cholera, hepatitis, leprosy, and yaws have been found on them. More commonly spread are the bacteria that cause Salmonellosis and Dysentery, and it has been reported that as many as 1 million children in Africa die each year from Dysentery spread, in great part, by flies.
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