- Joined
- Sep 27, 2004
- Messages
- 125
At the local pet shop (in Berlin) I ran across "Stummelfliegen" today; these are also called "terflies" and "curly-winged flies" and are a mutant variant of the common house fly Musca domestica that has wings which are curled up in back. This means that they effectively cannot fly. As to their size, they looked liked a small-to-medium-sized house fly.
I found them very easy to handle. They can crawl around and even hop a little, but are unable to fly out of an open container and are relatively easy to catch with the tweezers.
And because they lack the vigourous and powerful wings of normal houseflies, even a very small Achaearanea (2.5-3 mm) had no trouble overpowering one
Here is some information I found online (second link is in German):
http://www.jangala.co.uk/Curly winged fly culture webpage.htm
http://www.leiocephalus.de/Ernaehrung/ErnaehrungTerfly.htm
And here a shot of one of my Thanatus vulgaris enjoying one for lunch...
-Kevin
I found them very easy to handle. They can crawl around and even hop a little, but are unable to fly out of an open container and are relatively easy to catch with the tweezers.
And because they lack the vigourous and powerful wings of normal houseflies, even a very small Achaearanea (2.5-3 mm) had no trouble overpowering one
Here is some information I found online (second link is in German):
http://www.jangala.co.uk/Curly winged fly culture webpage.htm
http://www.leiocephalus.de/Ernaehrung/ErnaehrungTerfly.htm
And here a shot of one of my Thanatus vulgaris enjoying one for lunch...
-Kevin
