the.com/fly
the master of escape who tastes your sandwich with its feet before you do
means To move through the air, whether by wings, engine, or sheer momentum — or, as a noun, the small winged insect that haunts your picnic.
from From Old English 'flēogan' (the verb, to fly) and 'flēoge' (the noun, the insect), both rooted in a Proto-Germanic source shared with German 'fliegen' and 'Fliege.' The insect was quite literally named 'the flying one' — Old English speakers looked at the buzzing nuisance and called it, with admirable directness, the thing that flies. The slang 'fly' meaning stylish or cool is far younger, an Americanism of the late 20th century whose precise birth is murky.
- flight speed
- flaps wings 200 times per second
- vision
- sees the world in slow motion
- lifespan
- about 28 days, lived very fast
- liquid diet
- vomits on food to dissolve it first
- taste buds
- located on their feet, not mouths
house fly — musca domestica, found on every inhabited continent, ~12 mm long
fruit fly — drosophila melanogaster, used in 100+ years of genetic research
tsetse fly — glossina, transmits sleeping sickness in sub-saharan africa
robber fly — asilidae family, aerial predators with ~7,000 species worldwide