Funky Flies and their Stories

Most people only know a few types of flies - the one that lives in your fruit bowl, the one that finds the open window and the ones that bite.

But this is a very narrow view of the fly community which deserves more appreciation. In the Canterbury Museum collections alone, there are balloon flies which can spin silk like a spider, flightless flies which get around on foot, and bat-winged flies which are like tiny solar panels living in the mountains.

Taking a trip around the world, you can encounter the world’s largest fly, which is the size of a small bird, or the smallest fly, which can comfortably sit on the head of a pin. Then there's the stalk-eyed fly which rivals any alien from science fiction.

The world of flies is extraordinarily diverse and the evolutionary journeys some species have been on is almost unbelievable.