It's a natural thing to consider the housefly a nuisance, or even a bloody nuisance. It makes an irritating buzzing sound, it annoys you when it crawls on your skin; etc. etc. For ages, that is what man considered the fly to be--just that, a bloody nuisance. It was finally discovered in the twentieth century that the innocent-looking
housefly is one of man's worst enemies. We learned that these flies carried disease germs that cause the death of millions o people every years.
When you see a fly rubbing it's legs together, it is just cleaning itself, and scraping off some of the material that has gathered there. That is exactly what is so
dangerous/unhealthy - the material/bacteria that he gathered there.
It may of been bacteria for some such awful disease as typhoid fever, tuberculosis, or dysentery. Flies get such germs from garbageand sewage.
yuck. Then, if they happen to touch our food, the germs spread to the food, and if we eat it, we may become infected.
.
How does the fly carry these germs around? If you were to look at a fly under a magnifying glass, you would notice that the fly's body isn't smooth at all. It's whole body, its claws, and its padded feet - it's all covered with bristling hairs. The fly's tongue is also coated with sticky glue.
This means that practically any place the fly stops for even a second, it is going to pick up things that stick to its body. its feet, or its tongue. In fact, each foot on it's three pairs of legs has claws and two hairy pads-so it can make plenty of 'pick-ups'
By the way, a sticky liquid is secreted by the fly's pads, and it is this which enables the fly to walk upside down on the ceiling, or any surface. Did you know that flies are among the oldest insects known? Fossil remains of flies have been found that are millions of years old. If we want to get rid of flies altogether, the only way we can do that is to prevent them from breeding. And for this to be done, conditions have to be made very sanitary all over the world.
Jul 27, 2009 @ 14:10:12
