Common House Fly

Portrait of the house fly.

Laziness sometimes makes us curious and increases our concentration. As I was lying on my bed lazily gazing nowhere I found this fly jumping on my bed and observing it made me curious about it. As I had not done anything productive that day I decided to capture the fly at least.

A candid picture😉

Though we see houseflies every time and ignore them they have unique features which are intriguing. Those features include sensing with feet, having 2 big and 3 small eyes. House fly has a binomial name Musca domestica. It belongs to the species M. domestica of genus Musca. Houseflies are found everywhere around the globe. They have a lifespan of 2to 4 weeks. They are extensively used in research. They are considered as a parasite to Human beings as they can carry over 100's of bacteria within them.Adult houseflies are usually 6 to 7 millimetres (0.24 to 0.28 inches) long with a wingspan of 13 to 15 millimetres (0.5 to 0.6 inches). The females are slightly larger than the males. The head is strongly convex in front and flat and slightly conical behind.

 I used Nikon d7100 with 50mm 1.8D lens with 7+14+2mm extension tubes. I used a Yongnuo yn560 mark3 flash off camera in optical slave mode triggering it with the inbuilt flash. And post processed lightroom and Zerene Stacker.

They have 2 large compound eyes along with 3 simple eyes. The eyes of the houseflies are the main point of interest for photographers as they are easy to focus. The housefly has hair all over its body.

2 main eyes with 3 other ocelli in centre (in triangular stack)

As I was clicking the picture I observed the behaviour of the fly which used to make me wonder since childhood. If you observe a housefly sitting it keeps on rubbing its feet and also lifts the feet and brings in contact with the wings or eyes. This is the way how houseflies clean themselves. The houseflies have sensory organs throughout their body.

 As a primary student "Houseflies can taste with their legs. True or false" was one of the most asked questions in quizzes. And the answer is true.The houseflies as they have sense organs on their legs as soon as they sit on something the legs will come in contact with the food and they can decide whether it's edible or not. To keep their legs and all other body parts clean the houseflies or almost all the flys keep rubbing the legs and they rub their body with the legs to clean.

Housefly cleaning its wings

housefly cleaning its legs

The house flies are mainly carnivorous; their primary food is animal matter, carrion and faeces, but they also consume milk, blood, other body fluids, sugary substances, and rotting fruit and vegetables.The adult flies also drink water. The ability of housefly larvae to feed and develop in a wide range of decaying organic matter is important for recycling of nutrients in nature. This could be exploited to combat ever-increasing amounts of waste.

Houseflies feed on liquid or semiliquid substances besides solid material which has been softened by salivating or vomit. Because of their large intake of food, they deposit faeces constantly which is one of the factors that makes the insect a dangerous carrier of pathogens.

3 pictures which we stacked to get one picture

 I used zeren stacker to stack the photos to get better depth of field.Taking many photos focusing different regions we need to later stack them using the software to get a picture with a better depth of field. I will write about how to focus stack in my next blog. Here I have shown the 3 images which were stacked to get the final image.

Final stacked image.