Many of us are tempted to remain unmoved by a fly’s persistence in buzzing around our room. But as soon as we take a closer look at one of these insects under a microscope, we get a hint of how dangerous they can actually be from the simple fact that they cannot win a beauty contest.
The danger, in our case, lies in the house fly’s annoying hobby of landing on our food. Although this type of fly (aka Musca domestica) won’t chow down on your blood as a mosquito does, it can regurgitate muck that might be infected, according to a new study that ScienceAlert tells us about.
Throwing the food away is the solution
As harsh as it may sound, you should seriously consider throwing your hamburger away if a fly landed on it, for instance. Flies have the crop organ in their gut, and it’s responsible for storing food before digestion. Also, microbes and parasites can hide in that organ. What happens is that a fly vomits some of the crop’s contents when it lands on the food. You can easily guess that in this way, the fly can contaminate your food with even contents from previous sources where the insect has landed on.
John Stoffolano, who is a professor of entomology at the Stockbridge School of Agriculture from UMass Amherst, explained:
I’ve been working on synanthropic flies since I was a graduate student in the 1960s,
And synanthropic flies have largely been ignored. Blood-feeding flies have taken the limelight, but we should pay attention to the ones that live among us because they get their nutrients from people and animals that shed pathogens in their tears, feces and wounds.
Flies can contribute to the food chain, but at the same time, they can spread diseases.
The new research was published in Insect.