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The adults are 5-8 mm long. Their thorax is greyish, with four dark longitudinal lines on the back. The underside of the abdomen is yellowish. The whole body is covered with hair. They have reddish compound eyes. The females are slightly larger than the males and have a much larger space between the eyes. Like most Diptera, houseflies have only one pair of wings; the second pair is reduced to small halteres that aid in flight stability.

Each female fly can lay up to 500 eggs (in five patches of 100 eggs each). Within a day, the larvae ( maggots) hatch from the eggs; they live and feed in (usually dead and decaying) organic material, such as garbage or feces. They are pale whitish and have no legs. After several molts, the maggots crawl to a dry cool place and transform into pupae, colored reddish or brown. The adult flies then emerge from the pupae. (This whole cycle is known as complete metamorphosis.) The adults live from half a month to a month. After having emerged from the pupae, the flies don't grow anymore. Small flies are not young flies but the result of little food during the maggot stage.

Some 36 hours after having emerged from the pupa, the female is receptive for mating. The male mounts her from the back to inject sperm. Normally the female mates only once, storing the sperm to use it repeatedly for several sets of eggs. Males are territorial: they defend a certain territory against other males and try to mount any female that enters.

Some species of wasps can parasitize and kill the pupae.

Houseflies can only take in liquid foods. They spit out saliva on solid foods to pre-digest it, and then suck it back in. They also throw up partially digested matter and eat it again.

The flies can walk on vertical planes, and can even hang upside down from ceilings. This is accomplished with the surface tensionIn physics, surface tension is an effect within the surface layer of a liquid that causes the layer to behave as an elastic sheet. It is the effect that allows insects (such as the water strider) to walk on water, and causes capillary action, for example. of liquids secreted by glands near their feet.

Lacking eyelids, the flies continually clean their eyes with their forelegs. Most of their taste and smell sensor cells are on hairs on their legs, and that is why they also keep rubbing their legs together.

Houseflies originated in Africa; it is quite possible that they entered America along with Christopher ColumbusChristopher Columbus ( 1451 1— May 20, 1506) was an explorer and trader who crossed the Atlantic Ocean and reached the Americas in 1492 under the flag of Castilian Spain. He believed that the earth was a relatively small sphere, and argued that a ship cou. They depend on warm temperatures; generally, the warmer the temperature the faster the flies will develop. In colder climates, houseflies only occur together with humans. In the winter, most of them survive in the larval or pupa stage in some protected warm location.

Flies have a tendency to aggregate and are difficult to dispel, causing great annoyance to humanHuman beings are defined variously in biological, spiritual, and cultural terms, or in combinations thereof. Biologically, they are classified as Homo sapiens ( Latin for knowing man , a primate species of mammal with a highly developed brain. In spirituas. They are capable of carrying over 100 pathogenA pathogen is a biological agent that can cause disease to its host. A synonym of pathogen is " infectious agent". The term "pathogen" is most often used for agents that disrupt the normal physiology of a multicellular animal or plant. However, pathogenss, such as typhoid, choleraCholera (also called Asiatic cholera is a disease of the intestinal tract caused by the Vibrio cholerae bacterium. These bacteria are typically ingested by drinking water contaminated by improper sanitation or by eating improperly cooked fish, especially, SalmonellaSalmonella bongori Salmonella choleraesuis Salmonella enterica Salmonella enteritidis Salmonella nyanza Salmonella paratyphi Salmonella typhi Salmonella typhimurium Salmonella virginia Salmonella is a genus of rod-shaped Gram-negative enterobacteria that, bacillary dysentery , tuberculosisTuberculosis is also called TB consumption (TB seemed to consume people from within with its symptoms of bloody cough, fever, pallor, and long relentless wasting), wasting disease White Plague (TB sufferers appeared markedly pale), phthisis (Greek for con, anthrax ophthalmia , and parasitic worm s. Some strands have become immune to common insecticides.