Hello! Welcome back to my blog. This week's topic is about a fascinating little organism I stumbled across while doing online research into an entirely different subject, Dermatobia hominis, a.k.a. the human bot fly. Apparently, this hairy member of the Oestridae family looks rather like a bumblebee, but unlike the gentle bumble likes to incubate its larvae in living mammalian tissue. Despite its misnomer of a name, the human bot fly targets a wide range of mammals to use as a fly nursery and is not specific to human primates. That said, this fly is a familiar parasite to humans residing and travelling in its habitat, which ranges from Mexico to South America, and many a human in those areas has known the dubious pleasure of having a D. hominis larvae incubating subcutaneously for the required gestation period.
The bot fly typically lays its eggs on a mosquito, which then deliver the eggs to a mammalian host when the mosquito bites. After the egg is delivered by the mosquito, it hatches and burrows further into the host for another 6-8 weeks; after the larval stage is completed, the bot fly will self-extricate and drop off its host so that it can continue its pupal stage. This stage will often occur in any available soil.
The larval stage often appears to be nothing more than an itchy mosquito bite initially, but can easily grow to an bulbous protrusion that is approximately the size of an egg if not treated or if infection does not occur in the wound.
Simple treatments to remove the larvae usually involve asphyxiating the organisms by topical application of a smothering agent such petroleum jelly; this is allowed to sit on the wound for a day and then the larvae are removed using tweezers.
Note that I used the plural form of larva above. Yes, folks, multiple larval incubations are common in a host, particularly if the bot fly eggs were delivered via multiple mosquito bites or via another method; bot fly eggs have been known to simply drop off of trees and land in the wounds of unsuspecting hosts.
Think about that the next time you are strolling through a South American rain forest.
Until then, you can enjoy this link to a blog of a scientist who intentionally incubated a bot fly in his own skin: http://thesmallermajority.com/2015/01/09/puppy-killing-scientist-smuggles-rainforest-babies-in-body-cavity/
And you can really enjoy this video about a bot fly extraction: https://youtu.be/-K-QEEpf994
There are plenty of other fun videos showing extractions from human hosts, but I selected the one above because it is obscenity-free. Enjoy!
Photo credit: www.gizmag.com
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