How Far Do Flies Travel?
WouterFlying insects travel to find food and water. Generally, their visual range is less than 100 feet. However, they do not always maintain a beeline back to their food source. If they find it too cold, they fold their wings to keep warm. Houseflies have an average flight time of 3,500 hours per year.
Scientists at the California Institute of Technology studied flies and their ability to fly. They found that fruit flies can travel up to 15 kilometers – the equivalent of around 6,200 miles! This is far greater than the human flight record of over 350 miles, set by Dean Karnazes in 2005. To find out the distance flies travel, researchers devised a series of experiments known as “release and recapture” with hundreds of thousands of fruit flies.
While most flies are relatively small in size, they have been known to fly up to 3,000 feet in the air. This makes them the fastest living creatures on Earth. In hot climates, flies can reach temperatures of more than 3,000 feet! Despite being small in size, they can cover a great deal of ground in a single day, and they can fly up to 2,500 feet if necessary.
Flies can detect odours up to seven kilometers away, and they have excellent senses of smell. The olfactory sensory nerve cells in their antennae help them detect volatile chemicals. Moreover, carrion flies have incredibly sensitive olfactory cells.
