Alice Crampton, age 12,  Phoenix, AZ

How big is a new born fly?

Sometimes you see a biggish fly zooming around in a flock of little flies, There, you might suppose, is a Mama fly with a brood of babies, Perhaps she is teaching them to use their lithe wings, Not at all, Mama fly is not such a good mother, She just lays her eggs in a suitable place then goes off and forgets them, She never helps them hatch or stays around to give them flying lessons.

The eggs hatch into hungry maggots, These fellows eat themselves out of their skins time after time. This is the larva stage of the fly life cycle, It is a fast growing spell and a number of new coats are needed to fit the maggots as they get bigger and bigger, When they reach the right size  the maggots become chrysalises and sleep through the pupa stage, The pupae are about the same size as the full grown flies. will be.

This is necessary for when the pupae hatch into winged flies they can grow no more. Any newly hatched fly is as big as he will ever be.  The little flies zooming around the big fly were full grown. They just happened to be a smaller kind of fly than the bigger ones.