Shoo fly, don’t bother me

WE always lived parallel lives, it seems. Houseflies and hominids both began to evolve after our planet was struck by an asteroid, some 66 million years ago. Provoking a surge of ‘new life’, the period is known as Cenozoic, so named in 1874 by English geologist John Phillips, from two Greek words (kainos for new, zoe for life).

The common housefly, , is thought to have originated on the steppes of Central Asia, but latched on to the development and expansion of human activity and habitation, thriving on the waste materials created by Man and his animals. It is the world’s most widely distributed insect, accompanies humanity on every continent and is one of 125,000 global species of the order , but accounts for 90% of all