Cool Science- Lesson 6 – Life Cycle of the Fruit Fly?

When we leave fruit in a warm area outside, we will notice that very quickly some fruit flies are gathering on the fruit, so let’s take this opportunity to elaborate on the fruit fly.

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What we need for the experiment – (Parents ensure to assist the kids)

· 1 ripe fruit (It should turn brownish already)

· 2 Glass containers large enough to contain the selected fruit

How to do it

1. Peel the fruit and place it into one of the open glass containers, and leave the other open glass container empty.

2. Place both of the glass containers outside for 3 to 4 weeks in the sun

3. Every day you monitor the fruit and write down what you observe, remember to look for the fruit flies or any other creatures in the glass container.

4. After 3 or 4 weeks you will notice the difference between the empty glass container and the fruit inside the other glass container.

What’s happening?

When you placed the fruit into the glass container, you will notice the fruit flies coming to the glass container, then the fruit started to get rotten and uneatable, and out of no where suddenly you see small worms called maggots.

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and in the glass container that is empty there is nothing. This means that the fruit flies are playing a very important role in the decomposition of all kind of different foods or dead animals every second of the day.

The Life cycle of a Fruit fly starts with eating the rotten food.

1. Laying their eggs in the medium,

2. Larva

3. Pupa

4. Adult

After it has reached adult stage it lives around 40 to 50 days.

Reference - The Everything Kids' science experiments book.