Do flies every get sick? And from what? eating the wrong things?

Answer 1

10 POINTS PLEASE!!!!!

Heck yes, flies get sicker than dogs. But not very often. It's only logical that any creature destined to spend its life wallowing in garbage, feces, and rotting flesh must be able to handle most of what comes its way. One slow afternoon, when nothing else was going on in the lab, I guess, some scientists decided to count the bacteria residing on a random sampling of garbage-dwelling flies. Average population was 3.683 million per fly, with a high of 6 million. Of course, a bacterium or two will inevitably find it way inside the fly. As will viruses, protozoa, worms, and fungi. Flies not only stomp around in filth, they eat it too. And then regurgitate it, eat it again, and again. Flies are more revolting than you ever imagined.

Just as a nuclear plant worker might get suited up to dig around in a pile of plutonium, our friend the fly is protected from its environment by its hard outer shell, its exoskeleton. The chitin-and-protein armor is tough, resistant to chemicals, and waterproof. That helps reduce the fly's exposure to infectious microorganisms in the first place. But when they are infested, the bug's digestive fluids destroy most of the invaders. Others are ganged upon by cells in the bug's hemolymph (bug blood). Some surround the microorganisms and suck them up; others cluster together and form a sort of permanent capsule around the invaders. This three-layer defense is usually enough to keep a fly feeling fit.

But from time to time, the fly is overwhelmed and heads into a swoon. They're particularly susceptible to fungus infections. Since flies aren't particularly complex organisms, they usually go from a lively musca domestica to musca mortissimo in short order, with only a fleeting period spent as musca not feeling so hot.

Answer 2

They get sick from the same general kinds of things that we do. Once you allow for differences in biology.

Eating a bunch of raw suguar would probably make you sick, but not a fly. On the other hand, eating a lot of fiber would probably be healthy for you but a fly would tend to find it completely indigestible.

Likewise, flies have diseases and illnesses as we do... just not the exact same ones. A fly disease usually doesn't hurt humans, and human diseases usually don't hurt flies (which is why they can carry them around from person to person).

The same threats in a general sense, just frequently (not always) different specifics. We both still need air, for example!

Answer 3

Flies are one of those critters with such short life spans and eaten by so many predators that it is hard to imagine they have time to get sick. But certainly they are susceptible to bacteria and fungi. In fact, some of those microbial agents are used for biological control of pest species (look up IPM on the web). Also, all insects can get sick from eating certain plants that have poisonous secondary compounds that act to protect the plant.