Where is this noise coming from?
Well, the main cause of the buzzing that we associate with flies is, as many of you might have guessed, the fluttering of their wings. In fact, all insects hum when they fly, but sometimes the frequency just isn’t high enough for your ear to hear.
The noise of a fly depends on its species. For example, a black fly emits a very loud sound that we can hear from meters away, especially if it bounces off all corners and windows of the house. Houseflies make much less noise, but enough for us. House flies flap their wings 200 times per second – can you imagine the amount of muscles that must be involved in this process? This churning rhythm creates disturbances in the air that we perceive as an irritating hum.
Okay, but is it good for anything?
The fact that the fly buzzes when it flies is unavoidable due to its basic anatomy and physics. Even so, most of flying organisms use these vibrations to communicatebecause they can’t open a facebook account to stay in touch with theirs.
The combination of the flapping of its wings and the crec-crec of its exoskeleton deforming each time they flap their wings creates a great melody to attract potential mates. It is a way of giving signals and communicating. This inevitable hum and boom, while comfortable to mate, Warns predators of your presence. This shows us that flying is very important for this species at an evolutionary levelbecause although it puts them in danger, they still do not lose this characteristic.
Yes, but why do we find it so annoying?
While female flies may find this sexy, for humans and other animals it isn’t. Why? Well, there are several explanations for this. The first thing is noise peak, which is about 200 cps (for us, it would be like a male soprano voice), not the highest, but the better, the lower, the more annoying. Also, add the doppler effect understanding it as the variation of the rate of beating of the wings of the flies, which makes an erratic sound and that works like “anti-music” for us.
The main reason we find it annoying it has to do with our brain, which is constantly looking for possible dangers that may lie in wait for us. When a fly approaches us, we hear its unsteady buzzing and our brain focuses on it, fearing it might land on us or in our food, and our brain knows we don’t like it. This the overload And, being lazy by nature, our brain gets upset when it has work to do. This feeling of discomfort makes us act against the source of this discomfort. In this case, trying to kill the buzzing fly.
Now that we know exactly what’s going on, we recommend following your instincts and getting rid of this nuisance! You can try to squash them, but they fly pretty fast, as we discussed earlier. For a more effective solution, use spray insecticides like Bloom Instant, which kills flies in any room in a matter of minutes!