Talk:Housefly

Research

This statement "Houseflies have been used in the laboratory in research into ageing and sex determination." is not correct. This research was done with Drosophila melanogaster not Musca domestica. See AND Theflyelectric (talk) 20:26, 8 January 2018 (UTC)Theflyelectric

It is correct. You are right that fruit flies have been important model organisms, but if you read the cited sources for the housefly (see the Science section) you'll see it has played its part too. Chiswick Chap (talk) 20:59, 8 January 2018 (UTC)

References

Reddit spike

On 24 September 2018, a post on [https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/9id4u7/til_that_the_japanese_used_houseflies_coated_in_a/ Reddit produced a spike in traffic of nearly 135000 views. The average in the period per day is about 2000. Shyamal (talk) 04:08, 10 October 2018 (UTC)

see the human's movements in slow motion

"Flies process visual information around seven times more quickly than humans, enabling them to identify and avoid attempts to catch or swat them, since they effectively see the human's movements in slow motion with their higher flicker fusion rate."

This doesn't really make sense. Our speed of movement isn't limited by our speed of vision. BioImages2000 (talk) 11:45, 16 September 2019 (UTC)

I have looked at the sources and some related sites - flicker fusion rate is indeed used as a proxy for the the rapidity with which light is detected. Of course evasion involves - detection, nerve signal transfers, and muscle movement - all of which contribute to reaction speed so it is unclear what you are pointing too - the human (in)ability to swat flies or the flies' ability to evade? The text refers to the latter. Shyamal (talk) 04:19, 25 September 2019 (UTC)

Header with no information

The header "distribution" has no information under it. It should either be removed, or the section should have some information about distribution added. NicoleMerie (talk) 03:57, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

That section was lost after some vandalism earlier this year and I have replaced it. Thank you. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 07:19, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

Pupae are a bit bigger

I don’t know how long an average housefly pupa is but it’s got to be more than 1.2 mm. CrinklyCrunk (talk) 23:19, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

It is 8 mm as given in the lead. Not sure if there was some vandalism - my "who wrote that" plugin is currently not working quite right. Shyamal (talk) 01:58, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

Larvae timing mismatch

"After two to five days of development, these metamorphose into reddish-brown pupae..."

"Larval development takes from two weeks, under optimal conditions, to 30 days or more in cooler conditions." 2A02:AA1:116A:82BD:89E8:DD03:5FE9:7140 (talk) 21:49, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 11 June 2025

I was planning on adding the lifespan of flies based on information provided by pest control companies such as Orkin among others CohenJBaker (talk) 13:33, 11 June 2025 (UTC)

 Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. ObserveOwl (talk) 13:56, 11 June 2025 (UTC)

Misidentified image (as of 2025-11-09)

"Head of a female housefly with two large compound eyes and three ocelli" is the head of a Fannia species (Diptera: Fanniidae), not Musca domestica. Please remove.

I did check if WikiMedia has a decent picture of a female Musca domestica head but there were none. In general, the fly pictures in WikiMedia are -- to put it mildly -- not perfectly identified. As a guesstimate, I would say at least a third are definitely wrong and a fair chunk of the rest is unidentifiable at the claimed level.

Still better than the commercial photo libraries tho: I did once do a survey of some stock image company offers and for the housefly, they were over 90% wrong at a family level. For Drosophilas fruit flies, the error rate was 'only' 85%, but I did accept pictures of fruit and flies as "fruit flies" :)

Some rejected candidates: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/21/Mosca_com%C3%BAn_%28Musca_domestica%29%2C_M%C3%BAnich%2C_Alemania%2C_2020-06-24%2C_DD_01-31_FS.jpg *= Probably a Helina (Muscidae)* https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mosca_com%C3%BAn_(Musca_domestica),_M%C3%BAnich,_Alemania,_2020-06-24,_DD_61-75_FS.jpg *= Probably a Helina (Muscidae)*

 Done Day Creature (talk) 22:32, 9 November 2025 (UTC)

Lacking images to show anatomy

I'm honestly incredibly new to this but I feel as if more images could be put into this article. I feel as if an image or two showing the sexual dimorphism could be put in place. I have looked at this article a lot so I am aware some images have been removed for being misidentified and that this could be a lot harder than it seems to me but hey. Honestly just a bit of a nitpick on my part, I feel like the original misidentified image served a decent purpose in the article despite, you know ;-; Just a random newbie to Wikipedia who wants the article for their favorite animal to have a little more visual details :) ~2026-14622-25 (talk) 14:13, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

You know what this may be a completely useless topic on my part. can you tell I'm new to this yet ;-; ~2026-14622-25 (talk) 14:15, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

Common name

Figured I should check in here since this is a GA, but I noticed the article title is off. I was about to change text in the article, but since it would also involve a page move to house fly, I just wanted to give a heads up even though it's super WP:GNOMEy. For those not familiar, insect naming convention has single words reserved for things in this case that aren't true flies like dragonflies, butterflies, etc. If something is actually a fly though, then it's two words, so this article title is reversed. More background on that here and how dictionaries often mix up the wording as non-expert sources.

Anyone significantly opposed to changing text to from housefly to house fly? As far as I could find, this is one of the few articles that doesn't follow the normal insect common name convention in this regard, so it would bring things in line to be consistent elsewhere at least. KoA (talk) 19:06, 11 May 2026 (UTC)