Black fly

Simulium

Black flies are tiny dark flies that live near rivers and streams. There are almost 2,000 different kinds.

Lives in

Many parts of the world, near rivers and streams

Top speed

about 8 km/h (5 mph)

Can it hurt you?

Dangerous: look, do not touch

What does it eat?

The females drink blood from people and animals. They cut a little hole in the skin and lap up the blood.

A person walking about 5 km/h (3.1 mph)

Black fly about 8 km/h (5 mph)

A kid running fast about 13 km/h (8.1 mph)

A grown-up on a bike about 25 km/h (16 mph)

cool stuff

Fun facts

Their spit stops blood from clotting, so they can keep drinking.

An old legend from Serbia says a swarm of black flies came out of a cave where a monster lay.

One kind was such a pest in the 1700s that people near the Danube river still tell stories about it.

you asked

?Where do black flies live?

Near rivers and streams in many parts of the world.

Scientific name: Simulium
Named by: Latreille, 1802
Group: Flies and mosquitoes
Family: Simuliidae
Classification: Insecta > Diptera > Simuliidae
Lives on: Europe, Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Australia and Oceania
Also known as: Blackfly

Simulium (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
Picture by United States Department of Agriculture. Public domain, Wikimedia Commons. The round sticker of this bug is cut from the same picture.

If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.