Australian garden maggot
Bibio imitator
The Australian garden maggot is really a small black fly with smoky brown wings. Its funny name is about its babies, which are little maggots. It lives in Australia and New Zealand.
Lives in
Australia and New Zealand
Length
6.5 to 7.5 mm (0.26 to 0.3 in)
Can it hurt you?
Harmless
Harmless. It does not bite or sting.
What does it eat?
Like its relatives, the grown-up fly visits flowers for sweet nectar. Its young are maggots that live in the soil.
How big is it?
How long is it?
💅small enough to sit on your fingernail⚽could fly across a whole football pitch in 49 seconds⚡moves 290 times its own body length every second
How big is Australian garden maggot compared to YOU?
Just maths in your browser. Nothing is saved or sent anywhere.
How fast is it?
A person walking about 5 km/h (3.1 mph)
Australian garden maggot about 7.7 km/h (4.8 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
1
It is only about 7 millimetres long, and each wing is about 6.5 millimetres.
2
The males are covered in thick yellow hair.
3
It was first described in 1835 by the scientist Francis Walker.
you asked
Most asked questions about Australian garden maggot
?Where does the Australian garden maggot live?
In Australia and New Zealand.
?How big is the Australian garden maggot?
The grown-up fly is about 6.5 to 7.5 millimetres long.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Bibio imitator
- Named by
- Walker, 1835
- Group
- Flies and mosquitoes
- Family
- Bibionidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Diptera > Bibionidae
- Lives on
- Australia and Oceania
- Also known as
- Garden maggot
Where the facts come from
- Bibio imitator (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 Edisstrange. 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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