Cheese fly
The cheese fly is a small shiny black fly with red eyes and see-through yellowish wings. Its maggots live in cheese, ham and dried fish. They have a funny trick: they can jump by bending into a ring and flinging themselves forward.
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Fun facts
A maggot can jump 10 to 12 centimetres. That is like you jumping the length of a bus. This is why it is also called the cheese skipper.
To jump, the maggot grabs its own tail end with its mouth hooks, tightens its muscles and lets go like a spring.
On the island of Sardinia, people put these maggots into a cheese on purpose to make a special local cheese.
When resting, the fly folds its wings flat on top of its back.
Its legs are yellow-brown and covered in short spines.
Most asked questions about Cheese fly
?Why is it called a cheese skipper?
Because its maggots live in cheese and can skip, or jump, several centimetres at a time.
?Is the cheese fly dangerous?
It does not bite or sting, but you should never eat food with its maggots in it.
?How big is a cheese fly?
It is tiny, only about 4 to 5 millimetres long.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Piophila casei
- Group
- Flies and mosquitoes
- Family
- Piophilidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Diptera > Piophilidae
- Lives on
- Europe
- Also known as
- Cheese skipper, Ham skipper
Where the facts come from
- Cheese fly (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 John Curtis. Public domain, 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.
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