This is an article from Curious Kids, a series for children. The Conversation is asking kids to send in questions they’d like an expert to answer. All questions are welcome – serious, weird or wacky!
Where do flies sleep? You never see them still like they could be asleep. - Ruby, age 8, Giralang, ACT.
Great question, Ruby!
Flies are just like us – they spend the entire day buzzing around with their friends and get pretty tired at bedtime. Before sunset, a sleepy fly will try and find a safe place to rest. Some favourite places are on the undersides of leaves, twigs, and branches, or even in tall grass or under rocks. They need a comfortable place to sleep that will shelter them from the cold, rain and wind.
Flies need good grip because they often sleep upside down. If they sleep on the ground, they could get eaten by a hungry bird, marsupial, or frog.
Like us, flies will often nap in the shade of a tree to escape the afternoon heat. If they stayed out in the sun too long, they’d get very thirsty, overheat and would, well, drop like flies.
Read more: Curious Kids: Do sharks sneeze?
Of course there are also party animals, like mosquitoes, that stay up all night looking for the perfect dinner. Mosquitoes are a type of fly, and have adapted their super-sensitive eyes and antennae to see in the dark. Unfortunately for us, this means that they can use their night vision to easily find and bite us. Did you know that it’s only female mosquitoes that bite us? They need the protein in our blood to ripen their eggs. All the males are peaceful vegetarians that prefer a sugary drink like flower nectar.
Flies need beauty sleep too
We have fine-tuned body clocks, or circadian rhythms, that help us fall asleep and wake up at about the same time each day. When the sun sets, your eye makes two sleepy proteins called tim and per. These tell your brain to go to sleep. When the sun comes up, sunlight enters your eye and breaks these proteins, letting you wake up and start your day.
Flies and other daytime animals also have these sleepy proteins in their eyes. For nocturnal animals, like most mosquitoes, the cycle is reversed.
Read more: Curious Kids: Do animals sleep like people? Do snails sleep in their shells?
Have you ever wondered why adults say you shouldn’t stare at your screen at night? This is because the blue light from a phone, tablet or computer screen can stop these sleepy proteins from telling your brain to get tired. This also happens to flies when they are trapped in our kitchen and kept awake by the fluorescent light.
Fun fly facts
You’ve probably noticed a lot more flies buzzing around in summer than winter. This is because flies and other insects are cold-blooded, meaning they can’t keep warm themselves and their body temperature is affected by the outside temperature.
In the summer when it’s hot, flies are super active and buzz around all day. In winter, adult flies are too cold to move and die off. At the same time, the larvae stay in the cocoon, or pupal phase, waiting to turn into adults when spring starts. When the season changes, the flowers begin to bloom and the newly hatched adult flies have nectar to drink. While they drink, they also get covered in pollen and help pollinate the plant.
Did you know that without flies, there would be no chocolate? This is because the only known pollinator of the cocoa plant that gives us chocolate is a tiny fly, about the size of a pin head.
So the next time you’re in the garden on a hot day, check the undersides of leaves and try to spot a sleepy fly!
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Some favourite places are on the undersides of leaves, twigs, and branches, or even in tall grass or under rocks. They need a comfortable place to sleep that will shelter them from the cold, rain and wind. Flies need good grip because they often sleep upside down.
Sleep signatures in insects resemble those in other animals. While insects can't physically get some “shuteye” (hard to do without eyelids), they do enter a state of metabolic rest that science has defined as “sleeping” based on other behavioral cues.
At night, they will rest principally on ceilings, electric wires, and dangling light cords indoors. In all situations, House Flies prefer corners and edges or thin objects such as wires and strings. Night resting places are usually near daytime food sources and are usually 5 to 15 feet off the ground.
Flies are just like us – they spend the entire day buzzing around with their friends and get pretty tired at bedtime. Before sunset, a sleepy fly will try and find a safe place to rest. Some favourite places are on the undersides of leaves, twigs, and branches, or even in tall grass or under rocks.
The life expectancy of a housefly is generally 15 to 30 days and depends upon temperature and living conditions. Flies dwelling in warm homes and laboratories develop faster and live longer than their counterparts in the wild. The housefly's brief life cycle allows them to multiply quickly if left uncontrolled.
Indeed, insects are capable of nociception, so they can detect and respond to injury in some circ*mstances [3]. While observations of insects' unresponsiveness to injury warrant further research, they ultimately cannot rule out insect pain, particularly in other contexts or in response to different noxious stimuli.
House fly eyes are compound organs that are comprised of thousands of individual lenses. Compound eyes are capable of detecting both the polarization of light and color spectrums unseen by humans. House fly eyes can recognize even the slightest movements in a wide field.
The best explanation is simple light refraction going through the bag of water that confuses the housefly. If you will remember your biology from days in school, a housefly has large complex eyes made up of thousands of simple eyes that don't move or focus.
Scents that they're particularly opposed to are the strong, pungent odors, like clove, lavender, mint, lemongrass, eucalyptus, rosemary and citronella. Apply a few drops of these oils to strips of cloth to make DIY fly paper, or spray your deck and patio to keep flies away from the periphery of your home.
Flies aren't harmful, but they can sure be annoying and unpleasant, especially if they've invaded your home. If you want to keep flies away from you and your room and home, then you have to take some steps to fly-proof your home, take some preventative measures, and even create a few convenient fly traps.
Where Do Insects Go When It Rains? Because rainwater weighs down and damages their wings, most flying insects will stay outside and cover under leaves, inside knotholes in trees, under your roofline, or your window frames. They will go wherever they can quickly find shelter.
As such, the researchers are careful to point out that the research only shows that flies experience apparent emotions that have a similar function. It doesn't mean that flies necessary have feelings or that they are anything like our own.
It seems that flies really do glue themselves to the wall! The fatty substance they secrete has an attraction to surfaces as well as to the feet. It really is a glue!
And flies “hang out” when conditions such as temperature and light levels are not ideal. This is what they are doing when you see them roosting on the walls waiting for ideal conditions to go feed. The other reason they roost is when they are done feeding and digesting a meal. That's why they leave behind fly specks.
Most common flies can't hibernate, either, which means they need a shelter where they can access food. If you have flies, it means your home provides both of these things. Cluster flies look for warm, hidden areas where they can remain dormant for long periods. They won't eat much, reproduce, or cause any real damage.
Pulvilli (white parts, above) are special pads on a flies' feet that help them stick to surfaces and walk on walls. Their many tiny hairs create attractions to molecules of the surface they land upon, and secrete adhesive fluids.
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