Poll

How about a flying fly in your room and you punch that fly unreasably hard. Could you kill it?

Yes
10 (47.6%)
No
11 (52.4%)

Total Members Voted: 21

Voting closed: September 05, 2023, 05:51:41 pm

Author Topic: Kill a fly in mid-air?  (Read 6745 times)

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Offline AndyBeez

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Re: Kill a fly in mid-air?
« Reply #25 on: August 30, 2023, 10:32:46 pm »
Be like water young Grasshopper... Flyswater.

 :phew:
« Last Edit: August 30, 2023, 10:38:35 pm by AndyBeez »
 
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Offline mengfei

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Re: Kill a fly in mid-air?
« Reply #26 on: August 31, 2023, 01:32:10 am »
OR try a pair of Chopsticks  :scared:

oh since were on the topic of Fly.....a friend ask why does a fly or mosquito doesn't get left behind when it's flying mid-air in a moving vehicle  :-// 
« Last Edit: August 31, 2023, 01:34:56 am by mengfei »
 

Offline Nominal Animal

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Re: Kill a fly in mid-air?
« Reply #27 on: August 31, 2023, 04:29:45 am »
grasp them and crush between fingers
When it comes to crushing, would you agree these guys are really fun and games: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lipoptena_cervi . You really have to tear them apart with your fingernails, or crush them between two 9V batteries as they are so tough and... gummy.
I would rather pet a tarantula –– and I do have slight arachnophobia –– that deal with those darn squirmy obstinate tough things.

Those who do not know, these are a type of fly that drop their wings and burrow under the skin of various types of deer, elk, and moose.  They do not usually bite humans, but when they do, the allergic reaction can be very severe.  Typically, you don't mind them much, unless one happens to bite; the next summer and autumn and after that, you will be damn quick to remove them when they land on you.  I classify them more annoying and worse than hybomitra horse flies, which literally bite a hole in your skin, with the bite easily getting inflamed.  (However, I do consider simuliidae and especially ceratopogonidae worse, because at 1-2mm they can get through netting, like to crawl through tight spaces like inside your socks, and also bite very painfully.  The ceratopogonidae bite is like being poked with a very hot needle.)

Lipoptena cervi is also the pest that will end reindeer herding in Nordic countries in the next few decades.  Reindeer are already at their limit, it being too warm (too many parasites, actually) for them during the summertime.  Lipoptena cervi has slowly crept North in Finland, and has now reached the southernmost limit of the reindeer region; it is guaranteed to push the parasitic load on reindeer over the limit, so that large-scale reindeer herding (currently 200,000 - 300,000 in Northern Finland alone) will become unfeasible.  The much smaller size of the Nordic reindeer compared to Siberian reindeer due to the largest bucks being neutered and used for pulling sleds does not help, either: it leads to a larger skin to body ratio, and thus smaller resistance against cutaneous and subcutaneous parasites.

I personally grew up well north of the region where lipotena cervi is found.  My first summer in the Åland Archipelago with ticks (ixodes ricinus) carrying tick borne encephalitis, with lots of lipoptena cervi landing in your hair, was fun but also scary.  At least I'm basically immune to Puumala haemorrhagic fever (spread by aerosolized bank vole droppings when sweeping) due to genetic heritage, like most ethnic Finns are!
 

Offline mengfei

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Re: Kill a fly in mid-air?
« Reply #28 on: August 31, 2023, 06:30:50 am »
^ what kind of Flies are those  :o

here are some that i took when i was still into photography ;D






But these are the tough ones!
« Last Edit: August 31, 2023, 06:33:54 am by mengfei »
 
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Offline .RC.

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Re: Kill a fly in mid-air?
« Reply #29 on: August 31, 2023, 07:24:42 am »
Why are they even called flies.

A plane flies. A bird eats flies and flies itself.

Time flies like an arrow.
But fruit flies like a banana.

So confusing.
 

Offline Nominal Animal

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Re: Kill a fly in mid-air?
« Reply #30 on: August 31, 2023, 07:26:02 am »
^ what kind of Flies are those  :o
They're all blood-ingesting flies that bite (as opposed to e.g. mosquitoes which pierce skin with their proboscis):
  • Lipoptena cervi, also known as deer ked or deer fly, are louse flies
  • Hybomitra is a genus of horse flies, and belong to true flies
  • Simuliidae, also known as black fly, are quite small pests counted as gnats or midges
  • Ceratopogonidae, also known as no-see-ums and biting midges, are tiny; here, a millimeter or less in length – so smaller even than small fruit flies –, with their Finnish name, "polttiainen", referring to the burning feeling they cause when biting
In Finnish, only houseflies (musca domestica) are called flies or "kärpänen"; the various types have all their own distinct names based on their behaviour ("hirvikärpänen", "paarma", "mäkäräinen", "polttiainen", respectively, for the four above).

Typical electric flyswatters intended for mosquitoes and houseflies tend to pass simuliidae through unless they've already eaten, and both ceratopogonidae and small fruitflies just aren't large enough to short the two electrode meshes at all, passing through no matter how slow or fast you swipe.

DEET works very well for mosquitoes, but simuliidae and especially ceratopogonidae in Finland require a higher concentration (50%) of DEET to be fully repelled, but it is over the legal concentration here.  I'm not certain about icaridin's effectiveness as a repellent for those.  Raid insecticide works well, but a transparent sticky tape near the bottom edge of window panes works really well too, and is much less toxic.  After moving 1Mm south decades ago, I now have zero immunity against the bites, and actually get a heavy allergic reaction which requires hydrocortizone cream to calm down.  (I've tried just about every other product sold in Finland too, because I either cannot sleep, or scratch the bites bloody while asleep, inflaming them badly; so do not bother suggesting any.  It is an immune system reaction, essentially an allergy, at this point.)
« Last Edit: August 31, 2023, 07:28:20 am by Nominal Animal »
 

Offline artag

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Re: Kill a fly in mid-air?
« Reply #31 on: August 31, 2023, 12:26:26 pm »

 

Online Marco

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Re: Kill a fly in mid-air?
« Reply #32 on: August 31, 2023, 12:34:15 pm »
I wonder how cheap erbium doped fiber pulse lasers can be made, it's not like you need ns level pulses. 10 kw for 10s of microseconds would probably be good enough.
 

Offline BrokenYugo

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Re: Kill a fly in mid-air?
« Reply #33 on: August 31, 2023, 12:43:33 pm »
Fruit flies and the smaller bloodsucking varieties are too small for the electric swatter to zap them.  They just pass through. >:(

Try adding a doubler? The crappy 630V film cap they usually use on the output tends to degrade fast anyway. 
 

Offline Nominal Animal

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Re: Kill a fly in mid-air?
« Reply #34 on: August 31, 2023, 01:52:45 pm »
Fruit flies and the smaller bloodsucking varieties are too small for the electric swatter to zap them.  They just pass through. >:(

Try adding a doubler? The crappy 630V film cap they usually use on the output tends to degrade fast anyway.
The problem with that is the stink larger zapped flies will make: burned chitin smells awful.  Making a swatter with smaller spacing would work, though.

Fortunately, gnats and midges are not as keen on getting indoors as houseflies and mosquitoes, for some reason.
Also, fruit flies are easy to catch using a little bit of vinegar in a glass, covered by cling film perforated with a needle.
 

Offline BrokenYugo

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Re: Kill a fly in mid-air?
« Reply #35 on: August 31, 2023, 02:22:49 pm »
Fruit flies and the smaller bloodsucking varieties are too small for the electric swatter to zap them.  They just pass through. >:(

Try adding a doubler? The crappy 630V film cap they usually use on the output tends to degrade fast anyway.
The problem with that is the stink larger zapped flies will make: burned chitin smells awful.  Making a swatter with smaller spacing would work, though.


That's the thing though, once most of the metallization is burned out of that crappy underspecified cap you have to "fry" them and make them smell even more to get the kill. To work right they need two things, enough static voltage across the grids that any insect passing through will start an arc, and a capacitor to finish the job, sized to vaporize a mosquito and instantly kill flies, wasps, etc. Obviously the output capacitor would be reduced to keep the energy reasonable and keep it reasonably safe to fingers.
 

Offline iMo

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Re: Kill a fly in mid-air?
« Reply #36 on: August 31, 2023, 02:49:19 pm »
We - all the contributors here - are actually the invasive species for all the flies you have mentioned above  :)
Readers discretion is advised..
 

Offline Nominal Animal

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Re: Kill a fly in mid-air?
« Reply #37 on: August 31, 2023, 02:58:25 pm »
We - all the contributors here - are actually the invasive species for all the flies you have mentioned above  :)
So is everything that uses oxygen respiration for Clostridium botulinum.
 

Offline iMo

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Re: Kill a fly in mid-air?
« Reply #38 on: August 31, 2023, 03:08:15 pm »
All the flies were here, say, 300.000.000 years before the eevblog era..  >:D
Readers discretion is advised..
 

Offline Nominal Animal

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Re: Kill a fly in mid-air?
« Reply #39 on: August 31, 2023, 03:15:34 pm »
All the flies were here, say, 300.000.000 years before the eevblog era..  >:D
And anaerobic bacteria like Clostridium botulinum precedes all multicellular oxygen-using life by half a billion years.

Are you implying we should respect their 'dibs' and die of botulism?  You go first.
 

Offline Siwastaja

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Re: Kill a fly in mid-air?
« Reply #40 on: August 31, 2023, 06:39:13 pm »
Along with spiders, I like the common houseflies, they are great pets. Zero costs, you don't even have to buy them; they just appear out of nowhere, they find something to eat by themselves, it's funny to watch how they use that integrated vacuum cleaner like thing to enjoy spilled coffee or something, or watch how they carefully rub themselves clean, part by part, only to start over right after being finished. Good company, and no vet bills.
 
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Online jpanhalt

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Re: Kill a fly in mid-air?
« Reply #41 on: August 31, 2023, 08:59:09 pm »
@Siwastaja
Don't bother inviting me to diner.  ;) Have you read about "myiasis?"  We had a patient who celebrated Chinese New Year at a popular local Chinese Restaurant.  The cause of her illness was, relevant to your comments, ingestion of maggots from improperly washed vegetables.  Anything odd that a physician sees gets referred to the microbiology laboratory.  It was a common house fly.

Here's a nursery rhyme in America, "There was an old lady who swallowed a fly..."  (https://wordsforlife.org.uk/activities/there-was-old-lady/#:~:text=There%20was%20an%20old%20lady%20who%20swallowed%20a%20spider%2C,%2D%20Perhaps%20she'll%20die!) 
 

Offline .RC.

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Re: Kill a fly in mid-air?
« Reply #42 on: August 31, 2023, 09:07:08 pm »
Speaking of parasites, I read recently in the news of a person where surgeons removed a live worm out of her brain. 

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-66643241
 

Online jpanhalt

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Re: Kill a fly in mid-air?
« Reply #43 on: August 31, 2023, 09:14:55 pm »
All the flies were here, say, 300.000.000 years before the eevblog era..  >:D

Jurassic Park?

Edit: My advisor collected amber.  It's amazing to see a virtually perfect fly preserved in something that is not quite old, but very old nevertheless..
« Last Edit: August 31, 2023, 09:18:14 pm by jpanhalt »
 

Offline metrologist

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Re: Kill a fly in mid-air?
« Reply #44 on: August 31, 2023, 09:34:20 pm »
Maybe not a jab but a full overhand hook. Of course, I usually slap them into the wall or something else hard.
 

Offline Nominal Animal

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Re: Kill a fly in mid-air?
« Reply #45 on: September 01, 2023, 05:40:34 am »
Up north, we have a few dozen bird houses to help manage the local mosquito/gnat/midge/fly population in check.
I love the local spiders, especially indoors, because none are any danger at all to humans: their fangs cannot pierce human skin, and they have no parasites that can infect/migrate to humans.  They eat the ones that manage to avoid the netting, which means I don't have to use Raid to get some sleep.

The birds do funny stuff.  If you're there when they start nesting, they learn to accept your presence without getting alarmed, and will interact with you in funny ways.  When mowing the lawn, they like to check what gets exposed; when splitting wood, check if tasty morsels are revealed.  In the evenings, when the flying bloodsuckers form visible clouds, if you're outside puttering about, the birds fly around you catching dozens of them at once, sometimes even landing on you, with several bugs lined up in their beak.

A line of female goldeneyes have nested in two specific birdhouses for decades.  I swear they know us; they definitely don't seem to be bothered us doing yard stuff beneath the birdhouse, and feel safe coming back even if we stand just a couple of meters away.  One year, mom had netting to stop rabbits from eating the berry bushes, blocking the goldeneyes' chosen path to the lake, with a couple of the little goldeneyelings being unable to get through.  Mom had to lift them over by hand, but the goldeneye wasn't frazzled, just waited patiently tapping her feet, the way ducks do to tell their ducklings to come along.
« Last Edit: September 01, 2023, 05:43:21 am by Nominal Animal »
 

Offline Siwastaja

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Re: Kill a fly in mid-air?
« Reply #46 on: September 01, 2023, 06:05:33 am »
@Siwastaja
Don't bother inviting me to diner.  ;)

Dear jpanhalt, you are most welcome to enjoy dinner with us (including all the flying little friends).

But quite seriously, I'm under an assumption that houseflies here are nearly 99.999% free of any diseases or parasites, just like the mosquitoes do not spread any diseases either. Except when they do, and maybe the risk is slowly increasing with the climate warming, but I still consider it a very low risk item. If I were to live in India, I might consider buying the UV zapper thing instead of keeping houseflies as pets.
 

Offline Nominal Animal

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Re: Kill a fly in mid-air?
« Reply #47 on: September 01, 2023, 06:58:16 am »
But quite seriously, I'm under an assumption that houseflies here are nearly 99.999% free of any diseases or parasites, just like the mosquitoes do not spread any diseases either.
Myiasis does not occur with houseflies here at all; even with lipoptena cervi and hybomitra it is unheard of.  There isn't a Finnish word at all for myiasis, as it only occurs here with deer, moose, reindeer, horses, and cows.  You might get a stomach bug from housefly-tampered food, but that's about it.

Mosquitoes do spread tularemia (rabbit fever), Pogosta disease, and Inkoo encephalitis.  Half of tularemia cases have no symptoms, typically it shows up as a summer/autumn cold.  Pogosta disease is a rash at the bite site.  Inkoo encephalitis is a flu-like virus infection mostly affecting kids.  In some cases, these can all trigger long-term joint pain issues, but it isn't clear whether that is actually an autoimmune effect.  In typical years all these cases are counted in the dozens, and if you get hundred cases (out of a population of 5.5 million), it is classified an epidemic.  These are not deadly.

Tick-borne diseases and aerosolized bank vole droppings are a bigger risk.  Most Finns are immune to the Puumala virus (and if we catch it as a kid, it will only have flu-like symptoms and give a life-long immunity), but an Israeli researcher did die of it a few years ago here.  It does not spread at all, you can only catch it directly from the vole droppings.  Ticks spread borreliosis, tick-borne encephalitis (TBEV-Sib and TBEV-FE), and there has been one case of babesiosis.  Fortunately, both borreliosis or encephalitis infection can be avoided by removing the tick early (and correctly, including its mouth parts, which can be left in the bite if incorrectly removed).  Borreliosis can usually be treated with antibiotics, and there is a vaccine against TBEV.
« Last Edit: September 01, 2023, 07:08:09 am by Nominal Animal »
 

Offline Rick Law

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Re: Kill a fly in mid-air?
« Reply #48 on: September 02, 2023, 07:30:58 pm »
But quite seriously, I'm under an assumption that houseflies here are nearly 99.999% free of any diseases or parasites, just like the mosquitoes do not spread any diseases either.
Myiasis does not occur with houseflies here at all; even with lipoptena cervi and hybomitra it is unheard of.  There isn't a Finnish word at all for myiasis, as it only occurs here with deer, moose, reindeer, horses, and cows.  You might get a stomach bug from housefly-tampered food, but that's about it.

Mosquitoes do spread tularemia (rabbit fever), Pogosta disease, and Inkoo encephalitis.
... ...

Flies eat by throwing up their digestive fluid onto their food, then suck up the digesting mess.  So if a fly had attempted to feed from your plate of food, you may well be eating your food plus some fly saliva.  Just the thought of that makes me loose my appetite.

Mosquito bites will cause skin irritation at minimum, scratching it or fussing with it further can cause further skin rashes.

The pluses, I suppose: when I am taking care of my kid's cat, he does enjoy hunting them down.  So they are a cat-toy to some degree.
 

Offline paulca

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Re: Kill a fly in mid-air?
« Reply #49 on: September 03, 2023, 05:02:59 pm »
We have "miggies", tiny little mosquitto life gnats which will and do eat you alive.  Usually in the evenings, when camping or sitting out for an evening and they start to eat your head.  It's not sore, it's just really, really irritating.  When they are really, really bad you can end up just havivg to leave because you are literally scratching your head raw.  They are completely impervious to bug repeelent.  The only way to stop them is a raging camp fire.
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