fly

(plural – ‘flies‘ — for the right pronunciation of fly, please click here)

house flies

a kind of insect – with three parts of the body – head, thorax and abdomen, and three pairs of legs, but with only one pair of wings; grows to ¼ to ½ an inch; feeds mostly on(eats) the plant sap and nectar; lives for about 2 months; found all over the world,

male ~~ male

female ~~ female

baby ~~ maggot

group ~~ swarm, cloud, business

sound (not voice) ~~ buzz, hum

Some common ‘true flies’ are: black fly, house fly, sand fly, louse fly, horse fly, robber fly, bluebottle (bluebottle fly), greenbottle (greenbottle fly). Names of some insects which have ‘fly’ in their name but do not belong to the ‘true fly’ family are: firefly, damselfly, dragonfly, mayfly, caddisfly

Language Usage: The traditional grammar rule says that when the word ‘fly’ is used with another word, for the name of an insect, without an hyphen (-) or without any space/gap between them, that insect is not a ‘true fly’, for example, ‘dragonfly’, ‘firefly’, ‘mayfly’ ‘damselfly’, etc. (These insects are typically with two pairs of wings, i.e. a total of four wings.), but when the word ‘fly’ is used with another word with an hyphen (-) or as two separate words, that insect belongs to the ‘true fly’ family, for example, ‘fruit fly’, ‘blow-fly’, ‘flesh fly’, etc. (These ‘true flies’ are typically with only one pair of wings, i.e. a total of two wings only.) However, this rule is not strictly followed by all; we, at the basic level, are advised to note the difference and make the distinction by using or not using the hyphen depending on the insect we refer to!

Special Features:

Most of the 90,000 species of flies are a nuisance to people.

The most common and notorious of all ‘true flies’ is the ‘house fly’ which is the carrier of diseases, such as typhoid fever, cholera, dysentery and anthrax.

Flies cannot bite, but carry the disease causing germs on the hair on their legs, and in their saliva which they use to make their food material soft.

When a fly settles on a dirty place or some rotten thing, the germs attach themselves to the flies, and then when the same fly settles on something clean – another animal or person, and starts to rub its legs to keep them clean, the germs drop off on that place, animal or person, thus transmitting the diseases.

Most of the species can taste things with their mouth parts and feet as well.

Flies have been used to represent death – mentioned often in the ancient and modern scriptures!

For an interesting article about lanternflies, please click here.