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The forest fly – la mouche plate or hippobosca equina |
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Friday, 12 October 2007 |
A forest fly landed on the coarse weave of
my sporty shirt and I was not happy. I
brushed it off and it bounced back onto me.
They plague horses, collecting around the
anus and inside the back haunches in the
grooves of the skin. Try to swat them and
they scuttle sideways like crabs. With outer
skeletons as tough as
plastic, they are difficult
to squash. Insecticide
works, but it makes them
even more active until
they succumb. So this one
was killed by being
placed in the freezer.
Twice horse-owning
readers have written to
me about this little beast.
The fact that readers were not previously
acquainted with it confirms the information
in my books saying that in Britain, it is not
common except in the New Forest, which is
how it gets the name of forest fly.
The forest fly belongs to a group of flies
which parasitises birds and other mammals.
Some of these species have no wings. All are
tough skinned and rather flat in shape. The
forest fly has only two wings (not four). As
you can see in the photo, the vein structure of
the wings is solely on the sides and does not
extend to the tips, which are so transparent as
to be barely visible. Note also the spreading
legs, each with a pretty good-sized pair of
claws for grabbing on to hair.
Sometimes they are found, still alive,
slipping sideways between the feathers of
dead birds. These wretched flies spend all
their lives on their host
animals. They do not lay
eggs, as these actually
hatch inside the female
and the resulting larvæ
grow inside, obtaining
nutriment from the mother
until they pupate. The
pupæ can fall to the
ground, but their sticky
covering sticks to the hairs
of the host animal until they mature. They
then suck the blood of the host. Their bites
are said not to be painful to horses, and
perhaps they do not bite humans at all.
However, they can be extremely irritating. I
am told that horses can be relieved by
applying a layer of Vaseline,
so that the flies then get caught in the
sticky glue.
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