Over the years we have acquired a great collection of bizarre house fly facts ... there's some real creepy information about house flies that'll definitely make you squirm ... we have interesting fly information that you can impress your mates with down at the pub … plus we've also dug up some pretty cool mosquito facts ...

... so if you are planning to hunt flies with our clever little Amazing Flygun, check out these facts about the house fly and mosquito and take this opportunity to really get to grips with your bug enemies ...

• There are 120,000 species of flies, ranging in size from 1/20th of an inch to 3 inches
• Flies are the only insect to have 2 wings - all others have 4
• After studying 300,000 flies, researchers Dr Yao and Dr Yuan of China concluded that your average house fly carries 2 million bacteria on its body 
• House flies' feet are 10 million times more sensitive to the taste of sugar than the human tongue

• House flies walk upside down using glue-oozing toe pads
• To land upside down on the ceiling, flies grab it with their front legs and then somersault the rest of their body over
• A fly beats its wings 200 times a second, 3 times faster than a hummingbird
• Bush flies remain joined together for 80 minutes when mating
• A new born bush fly can start mating when it is 3 days old
• The favourite colour of house flies is red, followed by orange, black, violet, green, blue, white and yellow
• The sex of a bush fly can be determined by the distance between its eyes ( female eyes are wider apart)
• Flies can lay 200 - 3000 eggs in a life time
• A female fly will lay 75 - 150 eggs per batch and she may lay several batches over a few days
• Fly eggs hatch into maggots within 24 hours
• In 1788 seven cows and bulls were introduced into Australia. Today these have grown to 20 million and each animal produces 12 pads a day - 2000 flies can emerge from each pad - do the maths … it could explain why Australia has fly problems
• The dung beetle lays its eggs in a ball of dung and then buries it - they can quickly and effectively dispose of piles of animal faeces before the flies have a chance to start breeding in it - several species of dung beetle have been introduced into Australia and they are proving to be very effective at controlling the country's fly problem
• From Aug to Nov the warm winds in Australia blow swarms of flies from the North down into the South - the flies can be blown hundreds of km a day. This explains why in Oz hordes of flies seem to sometimes suddenly appear from nowhere

• Despite years of trying, no researcher has ever been able to teach flies anything - fish learn, ants learn, snails learn, cockroaches learn, even worms learn … but never flies
• A fly can travel 300 times the length of its body in one second - a jet travelling at the speed of sound only travels 100 times its length
• There are more insects in one square mile of rural land than human beings on the whole planet
• Flies can carry typhoid, cholera, diarrhoea, amoebic dysentery, T.B, anthrax, gangrene, bubonic plague, leprosy, scarlet fever and yellow fever … so don't feel too bad next time you zap one with your Amazing Flygun
• Flies vomit on food before eating it, so as to soften the meal up - you don't need us to tell you that fly vomit swarms with bacteria
• Flies defecate every 4-5 minutes
• Flies don't bite or sting … they stab
• A Fly's vision is only sharp for 24-36 inches
• Despite having 4000 lenses in each eye, flies have bad vision, but are good at detecting movement - move slowly and they don't see you as a threat - a useful tip to know when stalking flies using your Amazing Flygun (click here for more info)
• The average housefly lives for 21 days
• Flies smell with their antennae
• A fly's average speed in flight is 4.5 mph
• Flies jump up and backwards when taking off, so if you swipe at them from behind they will generally jump straight into your palm
• If a house fly spots a group of flies, he will join them. That's why granny's sticky fly paper worked so well - a few flies got stuck and soon all the others were rushing over to check out the crowd
• The quantity and type of maggots and flies in a decomposing corpse can help a forensic entomologist estimate the time of death fairly accurately
• Fly maggots only eat dead flesh, so specially bred sterile ones are sometimes used medically to heal septic wounds more quickly and effectively than conventional methods. The maggots devour the infected parts and leave the healthy tissue alone.
• A firefly's light comes from its anus …

• Dragonflies can fly at 30mph
• If a pair of flies mated and all it's descendants lived and bred without any losses to predators, then within one summer season there would be a million, million, million, million flies. That would be enough flies to cover the whole of Australia 11 metres deep in flies …
• Which is why it is a good idea for us all to occasionally kill a few flies - a fun and effective way to get rid of flies is to use an Amazing Flygun - this clever little gadget shoots a spring powered swatter at flies … and the great thing is … it really works >>> (click here to see more info)
• The term 'fly swatter' was first used in 1905 - however similar devices were in use beforehand and no one is quite sure who actually invented the first one, but the earlier versions went by the name 'fly killer" rather than "fly swatter"

• A German researcher has invented an enormous electro-shock fly swatter, measuring 4 metres by 1/2metre. A portable generator / battery runs 10,000 volts through it. Despite the size, it is light enough to be carried by a single man and can be used against swarming insects which are killed in milliseconds.
• A coffin fly can live for up to a year inside a sealed coffin - it can produce many generations who all happily feed off the dead body
• The robber fly is a nasty piece of work - this 2 1/2 inch monster fly hunts down other insects in flight then grabs them with its long spiny legs and pierces them with a powerful proboscis - still flying, it will then proceed to suck them dry
• Dance flies are also vicious killing machines which is why males are understandably a little nervous when mating with the larger female. To smooth the way, they offer her a tasty snack to keep her happy whilst they do the business. Classy operators that they are, they first gift wrap the offering in a ball of silk that they spin from special glands. Not all Dance flies, however, are totally honourable - the lazy, unscrupulous ones offer their potential mate an empty ball of silk, relying on the fact that by the time she has unwrapped the offering and discovered his devious ways, he will have already done the deed and made a hasty exit.
• The bot fly shoots its eggs into sheep's eyes. When South African farmer, Willie Spargenberg was on a hunting trip, he felt something flick into his eye. Unknown to him, a bot fly had mistakenly selected him as a victim. Within hours the maggots hatched and bored in behind the retina. It took a week before he made it to a specialist who discovered the problem and tried to zap the worms with a laser - but by now they were older and wiser and would scuttle off to hide in the crevices of the eyeball whenever he tried to fry them. A month later the unfortunate farmer's vision was still blurred and he continued to suffer pounding headaches. He was lucky, claimed the specialist, without treatment the maggots could have burrowed into the brain. For disgusting photos of a similar incident >>>> go here
  (warning - not for the squeamish)
• Spiders eat an awful lot of flies - the cyrtidae family of flies however, get their revenge - the young larvae leap onto passing spiders and burrow through their cuticles - they then proceed to eat the unfortunate spider from the inside out
• It is possible to make a small lightweight styrofoam model of a plane and then super glue a fly to the fuselage in such a way that it acts as an engine. It sounds like a messy business but apparently it can be done. We are reliably informed that the secret is to only glue the body - the legs must remain hanging free otherwise the fly refuses to flap its wings.
  Flies can't fly when cold - the above mentioned model makers take advantage of this weakness - a few seconds in the fridge and their potential engine becomes immobilised - by the time the little guy is warm enough to take off he discovers a 747 attached to his belly
• Mosquito actually means 'little fly' in Spanish
• It would take 1,120,000 mosquito bites to drain all the blood out of an average adult human
• There are 2700 types of mosquitoes
• A mosquito can detect a human from 20 -35 metres away
• 500 million people catch Malaria from mosquitos every year - 2 million people annually die from the disease
• If you cut the sensory nerve to the mosquito's stomach, it will keep sucking blood until it bursts
• Only female mosquitoes suck blood - they require the protein for the development of their eggs
• There are 100 trillion mosquitoes worldwide
• Malaria has killed more humans than any other known disease
• What's the difference between a lawyer and a mosquito? A mosquito drops off when you die! (Go here for more fly jokes)
• A mosquito beats its wings 600 times a second
• The Amazing Flygun works well with mosquitoes - the tricky part is finding the little blighters

So you see, our bug enemies are devious, dangerous and vastly out number us

We'd like to suggest that you seriously consider arming yourself with an Amazing Flygun

This fun little fly swatter gun is not only cheap … it actually really works …

They also make fantastic presents

If you want to see how the Amazing Flygun works >>> click here

Check out the low prices here

Admit it … you really really want one …