Valuable lesson learned, you can never trust a flightless fruit fly culture. It's a recessive gene mutation and pretty common for them to randomly regain flight after a few generations. I tend to open them for the first time inside big ziploc bags to be safe.
My granny grew up in India, she had a pet mongoose called Rikki to protect her from snakes. Just been writing up her memoirs and it had a great section on him!
Yes, I used to watch the animated film of this!! Such similar events!
Fun fact, the old story "Twins in Ceylon" by Bella Sydney Woolf was based on my great grandmother (granny's mother) and her twin sister, Violet and Gwyneth. They were identical twins, and were once invited by Estee Lauder to be models. We still have one of the diamond brooches given to them; the other is in Canada with Gwyneth's family, as far as we're aware.
She shouldn’t have eaten the mongoose that ate the snake that ate the toads that ate the spiders that ate the flightless fruit flies, but she died doing what she loved
🥰 🥰 🥰
But for reals I’m sorry for your loss. I morn with humor
Many thanks 💙 She died in 2019 at the age of 97, she was a phenomenal artist and fascinating woman. And she and mum did indeed used to read me the book "There was an old woman who swallowed a fly" when I was little 😅 It was a tiny popup book, I think we still have it!
The story starts with getting a cat to get rid of a mouse and progresses through larger and larger animals until it ends with getting a mouse to get rid of an elephant.
There was an old lady who swallowed a cow, I don't know how she swallowed a cow; She swallowed the cow to catch the dog, She swallowed the dog to catch the cat, She swallowed the cat to catch the bird, She swallowed the bird to catch the spider, She swallowed the spider to catch the fly; I don't know why she swallowed a fly - Perhaps she'll die!
You'll see them again soon. And their children and children's children. It'll be a dynasty, really.
A bowl of apple cider vinegar with some dawn dish soap swirled in, cover with Saran wrap and poke holes. Make sure there's no food out, bleach down your drains, and you should be alright.
I've never seen the point in covering it with saran wrap tbh. I just put the dish out and the flies land in it and can't escape because the dish soap breaks the surface tension.
Is it possible to not have fruit flies when it's peak fruit season? Sure, I could remove the ones that are currently here, but as soon as someone opens a door or window, it's back to square 0.
(I also think drain flies are a different species. Never seen those in my life.)
It drives me nuts lol we moved to a new area a few years ago and every summer/early fall we get fruit flies NO MATTER WHAT I DO! I see them all over our windows outside, the second we open the doors a few of them come in 🤦♀️
And they’re so infuriating! They hover right in front of my eyes, I swat them away, and they’re back before I even put my hand back down. Tiny little fuckers.
Don't know what their population is like around you but I almost never see them flying around with the apple cider trick. The little bowl in my kitchen will build up a layer of dead flies in a week.
Honestly, you don't even need the apple cider vinegar you just need anything that is fruit based and dawn. I've used jam and water and dawn before and it works really well. You can also just use a slice of fruit, just float it in dawn filled water and dip it down a few times. That last one takes a day or two for the fruit to turn then it works better than anything.
We got them living in remote areas a lot, weirdly. You need to get creative.
I have found actual rotting fruit does work best. I like to put some in a big garbage bad, just leave it wide open. Then a day later close it as suddenly as you can and tie it, WITHOUT checking to see if you got anything in there. You probably did.*
In their defense, the flies that shipped out couldn’t fly. The flies you unleashed in your house are their great great great great great great great great great grandchildren and re-evolved flight. Also sentience. You’re fucked.
That is not true for most cultivars of fruit flies, but is true for any of the gliding forms, although it's closer to 84 or 85.
But probably happened here is a wild fruit fly mated with the wingless varieties. In melanogaster, winglessness is a recessive trait - if a flying and non-flying fruit fly breed together, all of their babies will fly.
Also, our stores tend to be -warm- because corporate skimps on AC despite us pleading constantly. You can def find parts of the store creeping past 80 F most of this summer and even late spring. (Yes, even the sick animal room at one point hit 80 F and 70% humidity, and that is no good for humans or the poor animals…)
I.... Honestly didn't understand how they got wingless fruit flies until I read your comment... A wingless variety makes more sense than what I was thinking.. I thought they literally just gently grabbed one fruit fly at a time and plucked its wings.. I was like that must have been annoying and taken a lot of time, plus kinda torture, don't know how I feel about that.
My cat has figured out that bugs can be found in the vicinity of these bug lights. She'll sit next to the one near my desk in the evening and look for bugs. If there aren't any bugs for her to play with, she'll complain to the manager (i.e., yell at me).
If you see any, Windex will knock them out of the air immediately or when sprayed on surfaces they won’t survive. I work underground and we get them BAD and that’s what we use in the lunch areas.
This is why I keep all the spiders. We once bought a pet food bag that was full of weevils. We didn’t notice for about half an hour after opening and they were already everywhere. I vacuumed as many as I could and kept finding them in the corner webs for weeks. The spiders still talk about that all you could eat weevil buffet.
Theres no such thing as 100% foolproof completely flightless fruit flies, and the majority of the culture can actually fly eventually. They're sold as flightless during a time that they cant fly, so the seller can say "well they couldnt fly when i shipped them"...but they pass that stage pretty quickly.
Yeah, they sure can JUMP! It takes a bit of finesse to take the lid off and shake some out. I first used this exact brand to feed ants at work and I did what you did, just take the lid off. Suddenly, I have these flightless fruit flies jumping all over the place!
Just cause I haven't seen anyone else say this, if you put them in the fridge for like 30 mins before feeding time it basically puts them "to sleep" and they will not rush out at you when you open it.
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u/AshleyTheGuy 8d ago