More bug love
Location: s. indiana
October 11, 2011 7:33 pm
Found these little guys doing the deed on the hood of my SUV. Are these are regular house flies?
Signature: brian
Mating Flesh Flies
Hi Brian,
These are not House Flies. We believe they are Flesh Flies in the family Sarcophagidae. According to BugGuide, they are: “Similar to blowflies, but generally blackish with gray thoracic stripes (never metallic); 3 black racing stripes on a gray background” and they often have red eyes.
October 13, 2011 5:54 am
You are right these are flesh flies
Signature: brian
¶ Posted 12 October 2011 § ‡ ° Tagged: bug love flies
Location: St. Louis, MO
June 22, 2011 10:55 am
Recently my family and I have noticed flies in our kitchen. (They look bigger
than normal houseflies, and are showing up in great numbers.) We don’t know
where they are coming from or what type they are. The flies have red eyes, red
head, and a hairy body.
-The Fogarty Family
Signature: The Fogarty Family
Flesh Fly
Dear Fogarty Family,
You have Flesh Flies. Some species breed in rotting meat and others breed in other types of rotting organic matter. In our Glassell Park studio in the 1980s, we had a horrible infestation of Flesh Flies that bred in the rotting potatoes under the kitchen sink. Take out the garbage more frequently especially when the weather is especially warm.
Attack of the flies!
Location: Pleasanton, CA
June 20, 2011 3:45 pm
Before this morning, I haven’t seen more than 2 flies in my home at one time. Last night the coast was clear and then this morning I woke up to my hallway covered in these suckers. They look like house flies but gray and probably like 5 times bigger. At first none of them were flying, only crawling around like a spider would but then when it started to get warmer during the day they flew all over. I took to the internet and tried to identify the best I could and the closest I saw was a stable fly. Um, how and why?! Orkin man came later on in the day and sprayed and said that I had nothing to worry about that it’s not what I think it is. He told me that it’s just a bigger version of a green house fly. I was comforted until he said that because it looks nothing like that! These things are resilient too. I sprayed one with Windex and Pinsol and then stomped on it and it was still squirming!
These are the best pictures that I could get since all the other ones I killed have all their guts smashed out and markings are not quite visible any longer.
Please tell me I’m wrong in thinking that this is a stable fly. I would love to be wrong. And/or tell me that I’m overreacting to the dangers. I keep thinking that I’ll go to sleep tonight just to wake up to welts from bites and have more of these suckers on the wall and everywhere around me!
Signature: Scared and paranoid
Flesh Fly
Dear Scared and paranoid,
We hope we are able to comfort you by telling you that this is NOT a Stable Fly, though our actual identification might send you over the edge. This is a Flesh Fly in the family Sarcophagidae. We also don’t believe the Orkin Man solved your problem, though we are certain he had no problems separating you from your money. All he could succeed in doing was to kill the living Flesh Flies that had emerged in your home, but he could do nothing to prevent future occurrences. Flesh Flies do not bite and the adults do not pose any threat to you. Flesh Flies breed in decaying organic matter, including decomposing animals. Perhaps there was a dead animal in the walls which resulted in your Flesh Fly invasion. When the weather is warm, Flesh Flies may breed very quickly in decaying food like meat bones and fat or fish carcasses in the garbage can that has not been properly emptied. Once, we had some rotten potatoes under the sink and that proved to be a breeding ground for Flesh Flies. You need to locate the source of the invasion, though Flesh Flies will not continue to breed in a carcass once it has passed a certain stage of decomposition. Generally, once the original infestation has occurred, you do not need to worry about subsequent invasions. See BugGuide for additional information on Flesh Flies.
2
Fuzzy Flies and Robot Fly!
Location: Sacred Valley, Peru
March 3, 2011 1:49 pm
Hello! I am in Peru in the Sacred Valley out of Cuzco. I have 2 fuzzy fly specimen I was hoping you could help me identify! I don’t believe they’re the same! I also got lucky with this last shot of a fly who looks like he’s part machine! What are they…offically?
Thanks, WTB team!
Signature: offthegridinperu
Bee, possibly Long-Horned Bee
Dear offthegridinperu,
We are amused that despite being off the grid, you have internet access. One of your lovely Peruvian insects is not a Fly. It is a Bee, and we believe it may be a Long-Horned Bee in the tribe Eucerini. You may compare your photo to some North American Long-Horned Bees posted to BugGuide.
Fly, possibly Tachinid Fly
We believe one of your Flies is a Tachinid Fly. Tachinids are parasitic to a wide variety of insects and they are often quite spiny. You may use BugGuide to see some examples of North American Tachinids. Finally, we believe the Fly you compared to a machine may be a Flesh Fly in the family Sarcophagidae, and again, North American species may be found on BugGuide.
Fly, possibly Flesh Fly
Flesh Fly photo
Location: Seminole, Oklahoma
July 24, 2010 6:11 pm
Thought you might like this photo of a flesh fly. It was snacking(?) on a cicada carcass. Or maybe laying it’s eggs in there? Love your site!
Amy Goodman
Flesh Fly
Hi Amy,
We have been going through the past several days of letters in search of one in particular, and we keep finding subject lines that intrigue us and distract us from our goal because we think it is important to post the distracting letter. Your image of a Flesh Fly in the family Sarcophagidae will be wonderful as it will help our readership identify these large flies with red eyes and what BugGuide describes as a thorax with “3 black racing stripes on a gray background.“
¶ Posted 27 July 2010 § ‡ ° June 23, 2010
We left the front and back doors open for more than an hour this morning and found we had let two large flies into the house. We trapped one in a drinking glass and took it outside before eating lunch. Later in the afternoon we took some photos.
Flesh Fly
We quickly identified this Flesh Fly in the subfamily Sarcophaginae on BugGuide. According to Charles Hogue in Insects of the Los Angeles Basin: “Flesh flies have rather broad pads on the feet; males of many species have a red-tipped abdomen.” Our specimen has a red tipped abdomen indicating he is a male. Hogue also indicates: “Most of the members of this family are wild flies, but many species accidentally enter dwellings that are near their breeding sites. The larvae live in fish and animal carcasses and other decomposing organic matter, particularly discarded meat.” After taking photos inside the glass, we released the Flesh Fly who stuck around long enough to have a nice photo taken on the outside rim of the glass.
Mt. Washington, Los Angeles, CA
Flesh Fly
¶ Posted 24 June 2010 § ‡ ° ambush bug with flesh fly
Hello,
I’ve spent quite a bit of time on your site in recent months, trying to identify arthropods of all kinds. One I’ve found especially fascinating is the ambush bug–what a formidable hunter!! Several days ago, I was astonished to find one with a Silver-spotted Skipper, quite a large catch for such a small bug. Today, spotted one with a flesh fly. My goal was a good photo of the ambush bug, not the flesh fly; unfortunately, the near constant breezes of the last week are not conducive to ultra-sharp pictures. I almost deleted the picture, but then something caught my attention. The fly, in her death throes, had given birth. Just yesterday, in thumbing through my new Kaufman’s “Field Guide to Insects of N.A., read that some flies, including flesh flies, are viviparous. If you like, you may post the attached picture. Thanks for all you do. Between your site, BugGuide & my new Kaufman’s, I’m happily IDing most of my arthropod photographs. Sincerely,
Linda
Hi Linda,
Your photograph is quite wonderful, even though your primary objective is not as visible as you might hope. Try to remember that the excellent camouflage of the Ambush Bug is key to its success as a predator. We will be archiving your image on numerous pages, including flies, maggots, true bugs and food chain.
Long Legged Fly and Flesh Fly
WhatsThatBug, (my apologies if you’ve received this multiple times due to technical difficulties with my computer) I have a few photos to submit for your site, if you find them up-to-par and/or needed. – Photo A: I noticed that you have a few long-legged fly photos, but they are from “artistic” angles. Great photos! But I thought you’d also like this straight on shot, for easy identification. Photo B: A cane fly, of course, affectionately called a “mosquito hawk” here. These guys swarm from March to April (+/-). They’re no problem unless they get into the house where you better catch it quick or risk letting it die a painful death in an incandescent lamp (the upturning bowl kind). The halteres (balancers?) are visible behind the wings. This appears to be a female with egg-swollen abdomen, but I’m no expert. – Photo C: One of the photographs is of a fly I didn’t see on your fly pages – the flesh fly. At least, that is what I gather from the description here: http://ohioline.osu.edu/hyg-fact/2000/2111.html. She (?) amicably posed near my husband’s garden. The fly probably completed much of it’s lifecycle on a dead squirrel my kids found in the yard last week. It was about 1 cm in length. … Thanks for all of your work and helping me differentiate between scary helpful bugs and those I should genuinely avoid. I hate to kill another creature, and it’s worse when I do it out of self-defense (or defense of my kids playing in the backyard) to find that the “wasp” I’ve killed is really a garden/people-friendly bee fly or mydas fly and no real threat. Your work is really appreciated!
Kaylene
Bossier City, (Northern) Louisiana
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| Long Legged Fly | Flesh Fly |
Hi Kaylene,
We will be posting your Long Legged Fly and Flesh FLy photos. Thanks so much for filling the Flesh Fly void on our site.
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