Do horse flies bite humans?
Horse-fly
Horse-flies or horseflies (for other names, see common names) are true flies in the family Tabanidae in the insect order Diptera. They are often large and agile in flight, and the females bite animals, including humans, to obtain blood. They prefer to fly in sunlight, avoiding dark and shady areas, and are inactive at night. They are found all over the world except for some islands and the polar regions (Hawaii, Greenland, Iceland). Both horse-flies and botflies (Oestridae) are sometimes referred to as gadflies.[3]
Horse-fly
Apart from the common name "horse-flies", broad categories of biting, bloodsucking Tabanidae are known by a large number of common names. The word "Tabanus" was first recorded by Pliny the Younger and has survived as the generic name. In general, country-folk did not distinguish between the various biting insects that irritated their cattle and called them all "gad-flies", from the word "gad" meaning a spike. The most common name is "cleg[g]", "gleg" or "clag", which comes from Old Norse and may have originated from the Vikings.[4] Other names such as "stouts" refer to the wide bodies of the insects and "dun-flies" to their sombre colouring. Chrysops species are known as "deer-flies", perhaps because of their abundance on moorland where deer roam,[4] and "buffalo-flies", "moose-flies" and "elephant-flies" emanate from other parts of the world where these animals are found.[5] In North America they are known as "breeze-flies",[6] and in Australia some are known as "March flies",[7] a name used in other Anglophonic countries to refer to the non-bloodsucking Bibionidae.[8]