Horn fly
The horn fly is a small grey fly, about half the size of a house fly. It lives on cows and drinks their blood. When it is not eating, it likes to rest near the cow's horns, which is how it got its name.
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Fun facts
A horn fly can stay on the same cow its whole life. Only the mother leaves, to lay her eggs.
The females drink blood around 40 times a day, the males around 20 times.
The mother lays her eggs in cow poo while it is still fresh.
Many flies sit together on a cow, all facing the same way as the cow's hair.
It can go from egg to grown-up fly in only about 10 days.
Most asked questions about Horn fly
?Do horn flies bite people?
They bite cows, and sometimes horses, sheep and goats. They live on their animal host all the time.
?Why is it called a horn fly?
Because it likes to rest around the horns of cows when it is not feeding.
?How big is a horn fly?
It is about 4 millimetres long, half the size of a house fly.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Haematobia irritans
- Named by
- Linnaeus, 1758
- Group
- Flies and mosquitoes
- Family
- Muscidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Diptera > Muscidae
- Lives on
- Europe, North America, South America
Where the facts come from
- Haematobia irritans (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 Scott Bauer. 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.
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