Did you know that the male housefly can have an erection?

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I guess I've never really thought about it much. I've always assumed flies were some sort of non-sexual insect and new flies came from maggots. I guess it never occured to me that those maggots were the result of some sort of crazy insect mating behavior. But I just witnessed something that has caused me to change my way of thinking.

I was reading a post by navigator when a female fly flew across the screen and landed on the far right edge.

over there ------->

She sat there for a bit, preening herself, when suddenly a male fly lands on the other side of the screen.

<------ right about there

Now you might ask how I knew it was a male fly. I'll get to that.

She keeps preening herself and all of a sudden he starts walking across the screen. Then he stops for a second directly in front of my field of vision.

And I could clearly see a little fly erection. It looked like a small darkened piece of dental floss. When you think about it, that fly was pretty well hung, factoring in proportion and all of that scientific stuff.

And then..... whoosh! He takes off in a blur and before I could even react he was on top of her, humping like crazy.

He finished his business. ( about 2 minutes --same as kickycan ) and flew off. It might have been my imagination, but I swore I saw a little smoking cigarette dangling from his lips. And then he was gone. Around the corner and into the furnace room.

I turned my attention back to her. She was squatting down and pushing out maggots! Is that possible? Could the gestation period of a housefly actually be somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 seconds?

Or was she impregnated by a different fly at an earlier date and this second fly just happened to nail her seconds before she gave birth?

And why would he do that? Did he have no conscience? Or maybe he truly didn't know she was pregnant?

I realize I've asked an awful lot of difficult questions here, but I feel fairly confident that the good members of A2K can supply me with the answers I seek.

I'm fairly rattled right now. This whole fly sexuality thing was not how I expected to start my day.

Ok then. I'll wait for your answers.

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I'd move your computer room out of the pigsty Gus.

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Seems to me you're treating this matter a little too lightly, panzade.

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You're right Gus, spelling is important when posting on A2K. That should have read: pig sty. My bad

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Obviously I'm going to have to wait for some of the more serious members of this community to show up.

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Well Gus, it seems like you don't like the taste of your own medicine.

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Well considering the average life span of an adult housefly is from 20 to 30 days, I guess it is possible that gestation period is 30 seconds; sounds reasonable. Also considering the following - "Each female lays about 500 slender whitish eggs in batches of a hundred or more at a time. A half-day later, in warm weather, each egg hatches into a tiny white larva called a maggot. After five days or more, the larva is full-grown and then transforms into a quarter-inch, brown, seed-like pupa or "resting stage". From these pupae, 3 or 4 days later, the adults emerge and are soon ready to start families of their own. "

Unfortunately I could not find anything on the gestation period. But how quickly all that happens above, you could guess that gestation would have to be pretty quick. So my guess is the male fly did have a conscience and is a good father, at least, as flies go.

http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/natbltn/400-499/nb453.htm

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You're in good hands now Gus. I'll mosy on in to work.

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panzde wrote:

Well Gus, it seems like you don't like the taste of your own medicine.