Mexican fruit fly
The Mexican fruit fly is a yellow and brown fly, a little bigger than a house fly, with patterned wings. It loves oranges and grapefruits. The mum lays her eggs inside the fruit, and her babies grow up eating it from the inside.
How big is it?
How long is it?
How big is Mexican fruit fly compared to YOU?
Just maths in your browser. Nothing is saved or sent anywhere.
How fast is it?
Fun facts
One mum can lay more than 1,500 eggs in her life.
For a fly it lives a very long time: girls up to 11 months and boys up to 16 months.
The babies can tell when to leave the fruit because it starts to rot or falls to the ground.
Farmers fight it by letting out lots of flies that cannot have babies, so there are fewer new flies each year.
It probably reached the United States hidden as larvae inside fruit.
Most asked questions about Mexican fruit fly
?What does the Mexican fruit fly eat?
Its larvae eat fruit from the inside, especially oranges, grapefruits and mangoes.
?Is the Mexican fruit fly dangerous?
Not to people. It does not bite or sting, but it is a big pest for fruit farmers.
?How big is the Mexican fruit fly?
It is about 7 to 11 millimetres long, a little bigger than a house fly.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Anastrepha ludens
- Group
- Flies and mosquitoes
- Family
- Tephritidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Diptera > Tephritidae
- Lives on
- North America
- Also known as
- Mexfly
Where the facts come from
- Anastrepha ludens (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 Jack Dykinga, USDA Agricultural Research Service. 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.
Housefly
New World screwworm fly
Lovebug
Tsetse fly
Common fruit fly
Asian tiger mosquito
Silver-spotted skipper
Diamondback moth
Corn earworm
White satin moth
Spined soldier bug
Convolvulus hawk-moth