Each female housefly can lay up to 500 eggs in her lifetime, in several batches of about 75 to 150.

Houseflies have chemoreceptors, organs of taste, on the tarsi of their legs, so they can identify foods such as sugars by walking over them. Houseflies are often seen cleaning their legs by rubbing them together, enabling the chemoreceptors to taste afresh whatever they walk on next.

A single housefly can carry up to 2 million bacteria on its tiny body. Think about that next time one is swarming around your dinner plate.

They may seem faster because they're very acrobatic and hard to catch, but houseflies have a top flying speed of just 4.5 miles per hour--a brisk walking pace.

Male houseflies are sexually mature after 16 hours and females after 24. The life cycle can be completed in seven to 10 days under optimal conditions, but may take up to two months in adverse circumstances.

Since Houseflies live on a liquid diet, their digestive system can move quite quickly. In fact, they defecate every 4-5 minutes, which works out to about 300 times a day. It is speculated that houseflies defecate every time they land, even if it's on their next meal!

House flies are synanthropic organisms, meaning they benefit ecologically from their association with humans and our domesticated animals. As humans throughout history traveled to new lands by ship, plane, train, or horse-drawn wagon, house flies were their travel companions. Conversely, house flies are rarely found in the wilderness or in places where humans are absent. Should humankind cease to exist, house flies might share our fate.

Houseflies serve as mechanical vectors to over 100 pathogens, such as those causing typhoid, cholera, salmonellosis, bacillary dysentery, tuberculosis, anthrax, ophthalmia, and pyogenic cocci, making them especially problematic in hospitals and during outbreaks of certain diseases.

During the Second World War, the Japanese worked on entomological warfare techniques under Shirō Ishii. Japanese Yagi bombs developed at Pingfan consisted of two compartments, one with houseflies and another with a bacterial slurry that coated the houseflies prior to release. Vibrio cholerae, which causes cholera, was the bacterium of choice, and was used in Baoshan, China in 1942 to produce an epidemic that ultimately claimed 200,000 victims.

Houseflies have many predators, including birds, reptiles, amphibians, various insects, and spiders.