How Can Flies Live Without Wings?
WouterDid you know that there are several types of flies that don’t have wings? These creatures are known as hippoboscids. There are even those that have lost their wings completely. A few of these flies are also known as bat flies. In fact, many bat flies have rudimentary eye spots, and their flat body is easily mistaken for a spider. While most bat flies live in the tropics, including Central and South America, some have been found as far north as Europe.
Flies can live without wings because they have a passive mechanism to compensate for loss of wings. Their wing muscles are responsible for stabilizing their body and maintaining their kinematics. These mechanisms also allow them to compensate for loss of wings by adjusting the frequency of strokes. Moreover, the frequency of these strokes is important in order to balance lateral forces and maintain balance.
Adult flies can live between two and three days without food. But if you provide them with a suitable food source, their lifespan increases to a few weeks. Additionally, they live longer in cooler temperatures. However, before they can reproduce, they need food, since they need protein for copulation. Their copulation process takes two or fifteen minutes. Moreover, female flies need a source of food to make their eggs.
Some Hawaiian flies have evolved without wings. In fact, some of them have been living without wings for millennia. Historically, these flightless insects were threatened by the widespread invasion of predatory ants in the lowland forests of the Hawaiian islands. But now, the Hawaiian flightless insects have found a new home amongst yellow crazy ants.
