Do house flies read Darwin?
Asked by
janbb (
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August 14th, 2017
I’ve had about 10 house flies in the house for the last week. I managed to kill about 7 of them pretty quickly but the last three little buggers keep eluding me. Is this an example of survival of the fittest?
Humor – and fly swatters – welcome!
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36 Answers
No, but they did learn from this:link
I am. Seven at one blow!!
Indeed. The smartest and fittest flies know that a nice middle class home is the best place to winter over. After all next springs little maggots are counting on them to be healthy parents.
Traditional flyswatters are best, but nothing beats the feeling of accomplishment from dispatching one or more with a rolled up newspaper or magazine.
I read recently that in the case of wasps, squashed wasps emit a chemical that alerts surviving wasps and tends to have them be much more aggressive. Maybe flies have something like that for evasion.
Darwin, or evolution, on the other hand, is of course about genetic selection by survival and reproduction over many generations.
It’s possible though that they could have started out being 3 sneaky/nervous/alert/evasive flies and 7 slow ones, especially if your early mostly-successful ones could’ve included some misses on the fast ones at first.
Or other hypotheses…
@Hawaii_Jake Yeah, I did well with the 7 with newspapers, bills, theater tickets, etc. These three though are speedy!
Bonus question: how long does a fly live? Should I start charging these three rent?
My weapon of choice is a slightly damp dish towel. I really hate killing insects, but flies are an exception.
In Truman Capote’s wonderful story, A CHRISTMAS MEMORY, there’s a great bit about little Truman and his aunt being paid by their relative-landlords a penny for each fly they dispatch, which is one of the ways they earn money to buy the ingredients to bake fruitcakes for their friends at Christmastime.
@Pachy Wonder if they double dipped by baking the flies in the fruitcake. There’s an English cookie with raisins that my friends call “squashed fly biscuits.”
Every year for about five days in early summer I get houseflies. Zillions of houseflies. I have spent an enormous amount of time trying to find out why and I have come to the inescapable conclusion that they cross over from the Housefly Dimension. They plan an invasion of our universe and I thwart them with my trusty canister vacuum.
Yes – I remember this from about a year ago. I rarely get any and don’t know how they got in.
Actually fall is usually the big swarm with all the cold flies seeking warmth indoors. We have industrial size fly taps here around the horse paddocks, barely see any, not bad with 7 horses a few hundred yards form the houses.
Not here, @Coloma, the portal from the Housefly Dimension only opens in early summer. Your flies are just regular old flies.
How do you know they are the same three that have evaded you? Did you tag them or brand them?
@canidmajor Our flies are horse flies and house flies all competing for the same big game. Diversity you know.Maybe the flies out west live longer. LOL
Horse flies HURT when they bite, man.
@zenvelo Tag them? That’s silly. No, I branded them!
And besides, one of them said, “I’m Larry. This is my brother Daryl and this is my other brother Daryl.”
I had to replace mini blinds because of a fly.
There was a fly driving me crazy and I got the newspaper. He landed on the mini blinds and I tried hitting him. He got under the blinds and…. well it just got ugly. He did not live.
The electric flyswatters are very rewarding because your victim gives off a nice snap, crackle , pop when it hits the target. Zaps ‘em dead and cool sound effects.
@chyna A ceramic chipmunk that was on a window sill lost its tail this week in one of the frays.
@janbb So now it’s a chipped monk?
Average life span of a housefly is 28 days.
Because on the 28th day the woman gets REALLY pissed and blows them all to smithereens with a blow torch, while her husband hides under the bed.
Two little flies, sittin’ on some poo
Next thing you know they are sittin’ on you.
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