How Many Babies Do Flies Have?
WouterIn the summer, flies reproduce extremely rapidly and can produce as many as 190 quintillion offspring. This would make it possible for a single female fly to have millions of offspring within a few weeks if the female fly had plenty of food. However, in winter, long exposure to freezing temperatures kills the flies. Female flies hibernate in sheltered places during the colder months, but come spring they wake up and search for a moist area to lay eggs.
Female flies lay around 75 to 100 eggs per batch. These eggs are pale white and about the size of grains of wheat. They hatch after about twelve to twenty-four hours. After hatching, the pupae are inactive for three to six days. After that, they develop legs and wings. However, they do not have teeth. The larvae will grow into maggots, which are tiny pale white worms.
The tsetse fly is another example of a species that has a very unusual reproductive strategy. Their babies are 100 percent smaller than the mother fly. While most of the species that reproduce this way don’t have the luxury of having a female tsetse fly with a large wing span, tsetse flies are the exception. They can reproduce so fast, in fact, that their eggs take less than a minute to hatch.
While most species of flies are not very aggressive, they are not particularly picky about their food source. The food source they choose is usually the same: rotting garbage, manure, or grass clippings. In fact, a female house fly can lay up to a thousand eggs during her life.
