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Horse flies and deer flies [a] are true flies in the family Tabanidae in the insect order Diptera. The adults are often large and agile in flight. Only female horseflies bite land vertebrates, including humans, to obtain blood. They prefer to fly in sunlight, avoiding dark and shady areas, and are inactive at night.
Males of these horse flies feed on plant juices, while female are bloodsuckers, [7] feeding mainly on mammalian blood, as they require a blood meal before they are able to reproduce. They may be very annoying for cattle, but usually they do not bite people.
A bite is defined as coming from the mouthparts of the arthropod. The bite consists of both the bite wound and the saliva. The saliva of the arthropod may contain anticoagulants, as in insects and arachnids which feed from blood. Feeding bites may also contain anaesthetic, to prevent the bite from being felt.
On the other end of the spectrum, horse flies and deer flies use "blade-like" mouthparts to slash the skin before eating the spilling blood, which causes large, painful bites, Frye says.
Black flies are very small, just a bit bigger than gnats, and tend to gather in swarms. Stable flies look a lot like a typical house fly, except they have a protruding mouthpart to feed on (mostly ...
The thorax is covered with long hairs that give it a creamy white color, while the abdomen is completely black. [4] Much like other horse fly species, the Tabanus punctifer female requires a blood meal for the development of their eggs. [5] Females will bite horses, livestock, and humans, making them vectors of disease for pathogens and ...
A black fly or blackfly [1] (sometimes called a buffalo gnat, turkey gnat, or white socks) is any member of the family Simuliidae of the Culicomorpha infraorder. It is related to the Ceratopogonidae, Chironomidae, and Thaumaleidae. Over 2,200 species of black flies have been formally named, of which 15 are extinct. [2]
The stable fly bites humans at rest in the outdoors. In many parts of the world, the species is a carrier of trypanosomid parasites. [ 7 ] Some of the reported parasites and diseases for which the stable fly might be a vector include Trypanosoma evansi (the agent of Surra ), Trypanosoma brucei , brucellosis , equine infectious anemia , African ...