Posted on 11/09/2021 8:19:16 AM PST by Red Badger
A fly regurgitating digestive juices. (Carlos Ruiz/CC BY-ND)
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Imagine you're at a picnic and just about to bite into your sandwich. Suddenly you spot a fly headed your way, homing in on your food with help from its compound eyes and antennae. It manages to escape your swatting, lands on the sandwich and then seems to throw up on it!
It can look kind of gross, but the fly might be just airing out its own digested food, or spitting on yours.
Most of the over 110,000 known fly species have no teeth, so they cannot chew solid food. Their mouthparts are like a spongy straw. Once they land on your food, they need to release digestive juices to liquefy it into a predigested, slurpable soup they can swallow. In short, some flies are on a liquid diet.
To fit more food in their stomachs, some flies try to reduce the liquid in what they have already eaten. They regurgitate food into vomit bubbles to dry it out a bit. Once some water has evaporated they can ingest this more concentrated food.
Human beings don't need to do all this spitting and regurgitating to get nutrients out of our food. But you do produce a digestive juice in your saliva, an enzyme called amylase, which predigests some of the sandwich bread while you chew.
Amylase breaks down starch, which you can't taste, into simple sugars like glucose, which you can taste. That's why bread gets sweeter the longer you chew it.
Did you know flies can taste food without their mouths? As soon as they land, they use receptors on their feet to decide whether they're on something nutritious.
You may have noticed a fly rubbing its legs together, like a hungry customer getting ready to devour a meal. This is called grooming – the fly is essentially cleaning itself, and may also clean the taste sensors on the bristles and fine hair of its feet, to get a better idea of what is in the food it has landed on.
VIDEO AT LINK........................
Should you trash food a fly's landed on? When a fly touches down on your sandwich, that's probably not the only thing it's landed on that day. Flies often sit on gross stuff, like a dumpster or decomposing food, that's full of microbes. The germs can hitch a ride and, if the fly stays put long enough, hop onto your meal.
This is much more dangerous than their saliva because some of the microbes can cause diseases, like cholera and typhoid. But if the fly doesn't stay longer than a few seconds the chances of microbes transferring are low, and your food is probably fine.
To keep insects from landing on your food, you should always cover it. If your house is infested with flies, you can use simple traps to get rid of them. Carnivorous plants can also eat the flies and help control their population.
Are flies good for anything? Spitting on food and spreading diseases sounds disgusting, but flies aren't all bad.
Watch closely the next time you're outside and you might be surprised by how many flies visit flowers to get nectar. They're an important group of pollinators, and many plants need flies to help them reproduce.
Flies are also a good source of food for frogs, lizards, spiders and birds, so they're a valuable part of the ecosystem.
Some flies have medical uses, too. For example, doctors use blow fly maggots – the young, immature form of flies – to remove decomposing tissue in wounds. The maggots release antiviral and antimicrobial juices, and these have helped scientists create new treatments for infections.
More importantly, the fruit flies you may have seen flying around ripe bananas in your kitchen have been invaluable in biological research. Biomedical scientists from all over the world study fruit flies to find causes and cures for diseases and genetic disorders.
And in our lab, we study what the world looks like to insects, and how they use their vision to fly. This knowledge can inspire engineers to build better robots.
So, although it's a nuisance to shoo flies away from your sandwich, maybe you can spare a few bits of your lunch?
Ravindra Palavalli-Nettimi, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Florida International University and Jamie Theobald, Associate Professor of Biological Sciences, Florida International University.
Did Red Badger just throw up on my FR Front page with a fly barf article?
I think so!
Did Red Badger just throw up on my FR Front page with a fly barf article?
I think so!
LUNCH TIME!.......................
In the early 70’s Gibbons was the spokes person for Grape Nuts and had commercials where he talked about the benefits of eating pine cones (I am sure I am paraphrasing). Anyway, funny at the time.
In the summer of 1974, it was reported that Mr. Gibbons had developed ulcers.
He died in 1975 of a ruptured aortic aneurysm, a common complication from Marfan syndrome. But as a kid at the time, Yule Gibbons jokes about the benefits of eating pine cones were a plenty.
I saw that one, hilarious! What a great show that was! Doris Roberts and Peter Boyle were the greatest!
“How does Brundlefly eat?”
Yup, great comedy writing In That show, and great acting. All Of them could say ton with just a glance
Loved the line when Marie said “I’m not just a trophy wife”, and frank got a look of bewilderment on his face and asked “what contest In Hell did I win”? (Or something close to that anyways)
Those two were very funny together. She ended up taking care of him when he got a,zheimers in real life I guess. Was sad to watch him decline on the show. But he had a good caretaker if she did take care of him no doubt.
When will he start growing a mustache?
I should recognized him. I remember the grapenut commercials, but not him. My mind ain’t t what it used to be I guess. That was back when coming energizes were actually kinda fun to watch, and didn’t go on and on and on .ike today’s commercials
Have been watching old reruns of mutual, of Omaha’s wild kingdom, and thye break for commercials, and like 30-45 Seconds later its back to the show. o more than a minute. Today’s commerciz,commercials, just drone on and on, one right after the other, and are every 10 minutes or so sometimes.
Sonic used to have pretty funny commercials wit the 2 fellas- then the commercials went woke, and I haven’t laughed at any of them- totally boring now.
Anyways, thankS for explaining who gibbons was... I miss the old TV shows and commercials we had
Wait...so there are flies that have teeth?
My wife and I watch reruns almost every night on tvland, on xfinity. When great acting experience is combined with great chemistry it becomes memorable.
YouTube has some blooper reels that are insane….
I gotta check out the bloopers, those must be hilarious. 😆
Yes, dog flies and others.............
Thanks. I still wonder if they are teeth, or maybe, how do we define teeth.
Ok so they can vomit on your food. But do they also poo poo on it?
I don’t know.
I don’t watch...............
Food Ping? My Aunt Fanny! LOL!
I hate bugs. The only ones I don’t wish dead are REAL Ladybugs, Lacewings, Assassin Bugs, Monarch Caterpillars and Honey Bees. The rest of them need to go back to H#ll where they belong!
When they’re in the rendering part of the pork processing plant, they give rise to that expressioo, Lard of the Flies.
Yeah, that one took the long way around...
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