Horse botfly
The horse botfly is a hairy fly that looks a bit like a bumblebee. It has a very strange way of growing up: its babies live inside a horse's tummy. The grown-up fly cannot even eat.
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Fun facts
The female glues her tiny yellow eggs onto the hairs on a horse's legs and shoulders. She can lay up to 1000 eggs.
The eggs hatch when the horse licks them, so the babies get into its mouth.
The larvae first live in the horse's tongue and then move down to its stomach, where they stay for 8 to 10 months.
In spring the larvae come out in the horse's poo and turn into flies in the soil.
The grown-up flies live only a few weeks in summer.
Most asked questions about Horse botfly
?Does the horse botfly hurt horses?
Usually not much. The flies are annoying when they keep landing on a horse's legs, and lots of larvae can give a horse a tummy ache.
?Can the horse botfly bite people?
No. The grown-up fly cannot bite or sting. Grown-ups should still wash their hands after touching botfly eggs.
?How big is the horse botfly?
It is about 1 to 1,5 cm long, about the size of a bumblebee.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Gasterophilus intestinalis
- Group
- Flies and mosquitoes
- Family
- Oestridae
- Classification
- Insecta > Diptera > Oestridae
- Lives on
- Europe, Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Australia and Oceania
- Also known as
- Horse bot fly
Where the facts come from
- Gasterophilus intestinalis (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 Notafly. CC BY-SA 3.0, 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.
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