They aren’t enemy number one on my hitlist or anything, but I can’t profess to love
a fly.
They’re annoying.
They’re creepy, they are dirty and they spread disease…so would it be so bad if
they went extinct?
Hello and welcome back to Life’s Biggest Questions, the channel that looks to answer
a multitude of queries – I am your host Rebecca Felgate and today I am asking What
if flies went extinct.
Let me know your thoughts in the comments section down below and answer me this….
Can you sleep in a room with a fly in?
I absolutely cannot.
Foul beasts.
I get horrible paranoia that they are going to land on my face.
ERGH.
Also renditions of There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed A fly are quite welcome and very
necessary!
LIKE SHARE
OKAY flies.
Flies flies flies.
Does anyone know how many flies there are in the world?
It is more than you think.
Let me TELL YOU.
One source tells me there are 17 quadrillion flies in existence and another tells me that
there are 17 million for every person on earth.
I am not sure the mathematics quite adds up there but either way there are….
A LOT of flies.
There are 160,000 known species of fly, and entomologists – a person who studies insects
so knows way more about this topic than me - they can only speculate how many fly species
we don’t know about….
It could be thousands.
it could be millions.
The sheer volume of flies in question makes this question difficult to answer in under
ten minutes as we are literally talking quadrillions of insects, so we will try and keep this one
as basic as possible.
As always though our source links are in the description box and I would always encourage
reading around the topic.
Flies are not irredeemable baddies like mosquitoes… they actually are forces of both good and
bad.
On the plus side flies help pollinate plants and crop and kind of grotesquely they also
eat sludge in our drain pipes, eat dead wood, human excrement aaannd their larvae eat dead
bodies….which…again is a good thing.
On the bad side flies are damaging to crop, they spread disease and sickness and…in
general they are just pests…
So….let’s start with what would get better if we had no flies – namely way less sleepless
nights with a fly trapped in your bedroom… but actually major economies would be billions
of dollars better off.
Flies are part of the pest treat causing 120 billions of dollars of damage to the US Agriculture
industry - they also threaten the agricultural efforts of Europe, Canada, Australia, South
America, Asia….
And more.
Various species of flies cause damage to the crop or plants themselves, others damage the
produce by laying eggs inside fruits or vegetables, which makes them rot and unfit for human consumption.
Flies also harm agriculture by bothering cattle which causes a deterioration in their health
and certain flies, including blowflies can infest sheep wool which also is severely damaging
to economies.
We discussed this in our Maleria video, but there is definite cross over here – flies
can be vectors for pathogens which spread disease.
As well as Maleria and friends from mosquitos, Leishmaniasis is caused by the sanfly.
Tsetse flies can cause what is known in Africa as sleeping sickness and deerflies can cause
a plethora of issues too.
Common house flies can spread intestinal infections such as dysentery, cholera and typhoid, which
are treatable but have been known to kill.
Bad news.
On the up side though, flies eat nasty things….which sounds like a bad thing and to be honest they
can also spread their nasties to human food sources and make us sick… but aside from
that flies are great at helping us get rid of drain sludge, human excrement and decomposing
bodies.
Blue bottle flies and blow flies, for example, are helpful in cleaning up the earth as they
lay their eggs into dead animal carcasses.
These eggs hatch to larvae…or maggots, which eat away part of the waste…if they didn’t…well….
Their would be a lot more nasty smelly decaying bodies.
To add some stats to the matter – it seems that Researchers in Costa Rica have fed organic
household waste to larvae of the black soldier fly and found the maggots reduced the waste
by up to 75 percent.
Recycling is cool…so maybe so are flies!
While flies do damage crops, they’re also helpful in pollinating plants.
Midges, for example, help pollinate the cacao plant, which is where we get chocolate.
No flies…either no chocolate or very expensive chocolate as demand outweighs supply.
Hoverflies
One of the main issues we would face, other than the lack of chocolate, of course, would
be the knock on effect the lack of flies had on the rest of the eco system.
How many flies did we say their were….17 quadrillion?
At this point that’s an unfathomable number….
A seemingly make believe string of words.
In reality, this would mean a lot of hungry animals.
Spiders, birds and frogs are among the animals which eat flies.
In industrial farming, the Black Soldier Fly has been used to feed chickens, fish and pigs
and could be a more sustainable way of keeping livestock.
Some are even suggesting humans start EATING certain flies in order to feed our hungry
and constantly growing population.
Flies have been around for millions of years.
Literally millions.
Flies have been doing their thing for much longer than humans.
If they disappeared there would be good outcomes but for the most part it would be bad as a
major link in the food chain would be missing.
Ultimately though….
Their extinction is vert unlikely.
There are A LOT of them and they breed quickly.
Common house flies can lay up to 150 eggs in one sitting and around 500 in her lifespan
of a few short weeks.
Flies are a staple part of our present and they may even be part of our developing future.
Aside from possibly being used as a food source for the swelling population, it is also suggested
that they could assist with our need for sustainable fuel.
Researchers have ben able to extract oil from the black soldier fly larvae that can be used
as a biodiesel.
Well….
I have officially heard it all now!
Wow.
So guys….
Flies.
What are your thoughts?
What did you learn from this video?
Are you able to sleep in a room with a fly loose goose and ready to land on your face.
Comments from What If Mosquitos Went Extinct
Our most liked comment was ironically from The Most Hated Idiot On The Internet.
They wrote: Is it me or are mosquito bites getting more itchy each year?
Keith Donovan said: I could listen to the british pronunciation of mosquitos all day.
, Wait….
How did you say it?
Red Mist Said: Mosquitos: go extinct.
Godzilla: wakes up to keep the balance by killing half of our civilisation.
Thanks for watching…like share.
I am your host RF I’ll catch you in the next video but until then please do stay curious,
stay alert and never ever stop questioning.