Flies have two sets of appendages on their front bodies that look like arms. These are called forelegs or prothoracic legs and are used for various purposes, such as cleaning themselves after eating, sensing smells and tasting food, grooming themselves, communicating with other flies, and cooling down.
One of the most important reasons why flies rub their hands together is to keep them clean and free from bacteria and other contaminants. It is also essential for them to taste their surroundings.
Cleanse
Flies may be notorious for being dirty, but that doesn’t mean they don’t take their grooming seriously. In fact, they are obsessive cleaners, regularly rubbing their hands and legs together to clean them up.
Fly species such as fruit flies and house flies constantly come in contact with filth and dirt during their lives. This makes them susceptible to diseases, parasites and other harmful organisms.
As such, flies must maintain a healthy environment in order to survive and reproduce. To do this, they rely on their compound eyes, antennae and the bristles on both their legs and bodies to sense the world around them.
These portions of their bodies are considered their’sense organs’ and they help flies find food, avoid predators, and keep themselves healthy. The flies’ sense organs can become dirty from the substances that they collect on their bodies while flying or feeding on a meal.
This process is called ‘palpating’ and it is an essential function of the fly’s sense organs. Palpating gets rid of these substances and keeps flies’ sensory organs clean so they can be as effective at sensing their environment as possible.
It also helps flies to smell and taste the different types of substances that they come into contact with. This is important for them to be able to determine whether a particular object is edible or not and it allows them to locate potential mates or foods they can feed on.
Another reason flies rub their hands together is to get rid of any physical or chemical detritus. This gets rid of toxins that are present in the environment and it cleans their smell receptors, which is critical for them to fly efficiently, find food, attract a mate or search for a suitable location for laying eggs.
In addition to rubbing their hands together, flies also rub their legs (often hind legs) as well for more or less the same reasons. This cleaning process is called ‘grooming’ and it removes dirt and other substances that could potentially interfere with their ability to sense and taste the environment, according to Dr. David Grimaldi, an entomologist who is a curator at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.
Taste Sensors
Fly legs aren’t just a place for flies to eat or sleep; they’re also taste sensors. Just like a human’s tongue, flies have many taste receptors that detect various sweet and bitter compounds all over their bodies.
The main taste organs of flies are on the proboscis (or labial palps), but the taste sensilla are distributed over the body, including on the labellum, legs and wings. Female flies also have taste cells on their genitalia.
When a fly lands on a food source, it smells the flavor and then tastes it, using different taste neurons to decide whether it’s good for them or not. Those neurons are part of a complex sensory system that has evolved over hundreds of millions of years.
Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, found that flies have taste receptors devoted to sweet and bitter tastes. These are arranged in a series of rows on the proboscis and other parts of their bodies, such as their legs, wings, food-sucking proboscis and egg-laying ovipositor.
According to UC Berkeley neuroscientist Kristin Scott, the study was “groundbreaking” in that it is the first detailed genetic study of the fly’s taste receptors. In addition to the four sweet taste receptors, which have been known since the 1940s, flies also appear to have a fifth taste receptor, called umami, which corresponds to glutamate receptors.
These receptors can be activated by a variety of sweet, bitter and sour tastants. The flies can even taste amino acids. They are especially sensitive to phenylalanine, cysteine and threonine, but males prefer leucine and histidine.
Although the flies’ taste system is much simpler than the olfactory or visual systems, they use it to make critical decisions about food and toxic chemicals. It’s a short-range contact chemosensation that helps animals detect foods and avoid toxic substances, as well as select suitable mates and appropriate oviposition sites.
The flies’ gustatory system is organized in ways that allow flies to acquire contact chemosensory information about their environment and help them to make safe feeding decisions while walking or flying. Insects’ gustatory systems also provide important pheromone cues that guide behaviors such as aggregation and courtship, which are essential for social relationships.
Communicate
If you have ever watched flies closely, especially when they land on your food, you might have noticed that they often rub their hands together. This is a strange behavior that is quite rare, but it has a pretty good reason behind it.
The most common reason why flies rub their hands together is to clean themselves. This is a highly effective method of maintaining cleanliness in any environment that they live in.
It is also an essential component of their flight system. This cleaning technique keeps them from getting harmed by dirt and bacteria, which would otherwise result in death.
They can even use their rubbing motions to check the health of their limbs, which helps them gauge whether they are ready for flying or other activities.
Additionally, they can also use this rubbing motion to communicate with other flies and warn them of predators. This is called stridulation.
In fact, flies have been known to even use this rubbing motion during courtship rituals and mating dances!
Lastly, they can use this rubbing motion to dissipate heat from their body. This is a vital part of their survival strategy when the weather gets hot, as it allows them to cool down in an effective manner.
A popular misconception is that flies are dirty insects, but this is not true. They are actually obsessively clean animals that take pride in their appearance.
Stay Warm
If you’ve ever closely observed a fly, especially when it lands on your food, you may have noticed that the fly often rubs its hands together. However, this is a very uncommon behavior for a fly to do while flying.
One of the most obvious reasons that flies rub their hands together is that it helps them stay warm. It can also be used to communicate with other flies.
This is especially true when flies are outdoors, where temperatures can be quite cold. The temperature can drop below freezing point, and this can lead to the death of a fly.
In addition to staying warm, flies also rely on hand-rubbing for cleaning purposes. It helps to remove tiny particles that can get stuck on the fly’s body, like pollen grains and dust.
These particles are a big threat to flies’ ability to fly, which is why they have to be obsessive about keeping themselves clean.
To help keep their body clean, flies will sometimes brush their wings with their front legs, pass their back legs all over their heads, and rub their abdomens. This grooming process keeps dirt particles and bacteria off their tiny hairs that cover their entire bodies.
As a result, flies are able to detect their surroundings much more easily than they could without this brushing. This also allows flies to find better food sources and more suitable places to nest and reproduce.
While rubbing their hands, flies can also cool off on hot days by using their hand-legs to generate heat that can dissipate from their bodies. This way, flies don’t become too hot to survive when they’re walking or running around.
In addition, flies can also use their hand-legs to sense where they are and what’s around them, such as potential food or mates. This can help them locate resources that are available to them or send signals to other flies, telling them where to go next!
So, the next time you see a fly rubbing its hands, try to understand what it is doing and why it is doing it. This will make the interaction much more pleasant for everyone involved!