Australian bush fly
The Australian bush fly is a small fly that loves to land on faces, of people and of cows and sheep. There are so many of them in Australia that people wave their hand in front of their face all the time. That wave even has a nickname, the Aussie salute.
How fast is it?
Fun facts
The Aussie salute is the name for waving bush flies away from your face.
It lays its eggs in big dung pats, where huge numbers of maggots can grow.
In dry years, many of its eggs and maggots dry out in the cow pats before they can grow up.
Each spring, swarms of bush flies travel south and fill up Australia again.
A mother fly needs to eat enough protein, or her eggs stop growing.
Most asked questions about Australian bush fly
?Why do Australian bush flies land on your face?
They are looking for moisture to drink, from your eyes, nose and mouth, just like they do on cows and sheep.
?What is the Aussie salute?
It is the hand wave people in Australia use to keep bush flies off their face.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Musca vetustissima
- Group
- Flies and mosquitoes
- Family
- Muscidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Diptera > Muscidae
- Lives on
- Australia and Oceania
Where the facts come from
- Musca vetustissima (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
- Picture by Jean and Fred. CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons. The round sticker of this bug is cut from the same picture.
If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at hello@bugwiki.app and we will fix it.
Housefly
New World screwworm fly
Lovebug
Tsetse fly
Common fruit fly
Asian tiger mosquito
Ivy bee
Whitebanded crab spider
Oblong-winged katydid
Blue shield bug
Yellow-tail moth
Milk snail