True flies belong to the Order Diptera, and contains an immense number of insects, nearly 100,000 known species.  The hind wings are reduced to minute pin-shaped bodies known as balancers or halteres, which act as gyroscopes and help to maintain the fly's balance in flight.  The single pair of wings give the Order it's name: "two winged".  A few species have no wings at all, examples are; sheep ked, forest fly and deer fly.

Although a few hover flies are able to crush pollen grains, flies feed almost exclusively on liquids....remember the movie, with Jeff Goldblum vomiting over everything, well basically that is what flies do..! lovely eh!, anyway, as I was saying, they feed mainly on nectar, but many other liquids too.  Many species like mosquitoes, midges, horseflies etc., feed on blood. Houseflies and Blowflies rely entirely on mopping up surface liquids with a pair of spongy pads at the tip of their mouth parts, though they can deal with soluble solids by vomiting on them. Disease is spread by flies regurgitating over our food after they have visited dung heaps or carrion.  Some flies do not feed at all once they become adults.

Below you will see a picture of the House Fly showing it's breeding cycle which, referring to Cockroaches page, is a complete metamorphism;

 

As you can see from the picture below, the eyes of an insect are amazing, in fact they are made up of lots of eyes, this is known as a compound eye:

Pretty amazzzzzzing eh..! so now you know why you can't creep up on a fly with a newspaper..cos it virtually has eyes in the back of it's head.

Anyway please wander around this fly ridden area by clicking on the name of the fly you want at the top of the page..if you need to email me then click the piedpiper