Brown blowfly
The brown blowfly is a buzzing fly with a grey middle and a shiny golden-brown back end. It is part of nature's clean-up team. It is often the very first insect to find a dead animal, and its babies help to clear it away.
How fast is it?
Fun facts
It smells with the tips of its feelers and can find a dead animal within a few hours.
Scientists who help the police sometimes study these flies. How old the young flies are can tell them when an animal died.
A male has such big eyes that they almost touch on top of his head. A female's eyes sit further apart.
Its body has an inner clock that runs on about 23 hours, a little shorter than our day.
Grown-up flies live from about two weeks to three months. In cooler weather they live longer.
Most asked questions about Brown blowfly
?Where does the brown blowfly live?
In Australia and New Zealand. In the Māori language it is called rango tumaro.
?Why do blowflies find dead animals so fast?
They have smell sensors on the tips of their feelers. They can pick up the smell within hours.
?Is the brown blowfly dangerous?
No, it does not bite or sting. Just keep food covered, because flies can carry germs.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Calliphora stygia
- Group
- Flies and mosquitoes
- Family
- Calliphoridae
- Classification
- Insecta > Diptera > Calliphoridae
- Lives on
- Australia and Oceania
Where the facts come from
- Calliphora stygia (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 Desmond W. Helmore. CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this 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.
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