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The House Fly (2nd Edition) 1958 Encyclopaedia Britannica Films
🕑 Added 2019-11-05 03:15:15 +0000 UTCmore at http://quickfound.net/
'Complete story of the fly showing the 4 stages--egg, larva, pupa and adult. Emphasis given to the need for community action against this pest.'
Originally a public domain film from the Library of Congress Prelinger Archives, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and one-pass brightness-contrast-color correction & mild video noise reduction applied.
The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housefly
Wikipedia license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
The housefly (Musca domestica) is a fly of the suborder Cyclorrhapha. It is believed to have evolved in the Cenozoic era, possibly in the Middle East, and has spread all over the world as a commensal of humans. It is the most common fly species found in houses. Adults are grey to black, with four dark, longitudinal lines on the thorax, slightly hairy bodies, and a single pair of membranous wings. They have red eyes, set farther apart in the slightly larger female.
The female housefly usually mates only once and stores the sperm for later use. She lays batches of about 100 eggs on decaying organic matter such as food waste, carrion, or feces. These soon hatch into legless white larvae, known as maggots. After 2 to 5 days of development, these metamorphose into reddish-brown pupae, about 8 mm (0.3 in) long. Adult flies normally live for 2 to 4 weeks, but can hibernate during the winter. The adults feed on a variety of liquid or semiliquid substances, as well as solid materials which have been softened by their saliva. They can carry pathogens on their bodies and in their faeces, contaminate food, and contribute to the transfer of food-borne illnesses, while, in numbers, they can be physically annoying. For these reasons, they are considered pests.
Houseflies have been used in the laboratory in research into aging and sex determination. Flies appear in literature from Ancient Greek myth and Aesop's The Impertinent Insect onwards. Authors sometimes choose the fly to speak of the brevity of life, as in William Blake's 1794 poem "The Fly", which deals with mortality subject to uncontrollable circumstances...
Distribution
The housefly is probably the insect with the widest distribution in the world; it is largely associated with humans and has accompanied them around the globe. It is present in the Arctic, as well as in the tropics, where it is abundant. It is present in all populated parts of Europe, Asia, Africa, Australasia, and the Americas.
Evolution and taxonomy
Though the order of flies (Diptera) is much older, true houseflies are believed to have evolved in the beginning of the Cenozoic era. The housefly's superfamily, Muscoidea, is most closely related to the Oestroidea (blow flies, flesh flies and allies), and more distantly to the Hippoboscoidea (louse flies, bat flies and allies). They are thought to have originated in the southern Palearctic region, particularly the Middle East. Because of their close, commensal relationship with humans, they probably owe their worldwide dispersal to co-migration with humans.
The housefly was first described as Musca domestica in 1758 based on the common European specimens by the Swedish botanist and zoologist Carl Linnaeus in his Systema naturae and continues to be classified under that name. A more detailed description was given in 1776 by the Danish entomologist Johan Christian Fabricius in his Genera Insectorum...
