Locust blowfly
The locust blowfly looks a bit like a house fly with a striped back and a yellow and black banded tummy. It has a long snout for sipping from flowers. Its babies are a big help to farmers in Africa.
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Fun facts
Its larvae eat the eggs of locusts, the grasshoppers that can destroy whole fields in Africa.
Because of its banded tummy, people often mistake it for a hoverfly.
The adults travel long distances and are seen from July to October.
The males have big orange patches on the sides of the tummy, the females only grey dusty ones.
Most asked questions about Locust blowfly
?Why is it called the locust blowfly?
Because its larvae eat locust eggs.
?Is the locust blowfly harmful?
No. It is harmless to people and even helps farmers by eating locust eggs.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Stomorhina lunata
- Named by
- Fabricius, 1805
- Group
- Flies and mosquitoes
- Family
- Rhiniidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Diptera > Rhiniidae
- Lives on
- Europe, Africa, Asia, North America
Where the facts come from
- Stomorhina lunata (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 Alvesgaspar. CC BY-SA 3.0, 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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