What Really Happens When a Fly Lands on Your Food

There are different things you can do when you see a fly resting on your food. For example, you could immediately throw your tasty lunch away. But there are some of us who will keep eating like nothing happened because, “it’s just a fly.” Well, these bugs can actually bring some problems to your plate, and it’s better to know about them than to stay blissfully ignorant.

To help you understand everything that happens once this bug touches your food, Bright Side did some research and prepared this article for you.

It is known that flies contaminate your food with at least the last meal they’ve been on. But it seems that the impact these tiny creatures cause is much larger than their size and a lot more complicated than you may think.

1. They can vomit on your food.

Here is what you need to know: houseflies eat by sucking fluids through their tubular mouths. The shape of their mouths is why they have to turn any meal into a liquid. To do this, they puke on your food with their own saliva, which could contain anything that they’ve eaten before (for example, rotten meat or feces).

2. They can lay eggs on your meal.

Those delicious leftovers you’ve been saving for later can turn into the perfect nest for eggs. And after some time passes, they will grow into little baby houseflies (maggots or larvae) who can really poison you with bacteria. So remember to cover your food if you’re gonna leave it out for a while.

3. Their legs and wings can turn your food into a nest of bacteria.

We already know that these bugs are filled with bacteria inside. But did you know that the highest number of microbes can be found on the outside of their body? According to Nanyang Technological University, “each step of hundreds that a fly has taken leaves behind a microbial colony track.” That means anything they touch can get seriously infected too.

4. They can carry over 60 diseases.

Houseflies can transmit at least 65 different diseases to humans just by crawling through garbage and food. That includes dysentery, diarrhea, cholera, and even leprosy. And it’s not just humans that can suffer, flies can infect other animals too, like chickens or pigs.

What did you do before when a fly came near your food? Will you change your behavior from now on? What do you do to save your food from flies?