It’s a beautiful day in Belize, the sticky
Caribbean sun lingers high above the horizon.
You’re strolling along, when you feel a needling on your neck.
You slap at the spot, and find the remains of a mosquito.
Ugh, that’s annoying, you think to yourself.
Now that you’re back home from your tropical vacation, your mind
drifting back to that memory of a gummy sun in Central America, you
think that memories are the only things you brought back with you.
The mosquito bite isn’t going away, and
it’s hurting more than it did before.
You can’t help but itch the spot when suddenly you feel something new.
As your fingers slowly slide across your wound, you feel it.
A slight… wiggling.
Oh no… there’s something in there.
What do you do when you find out there’s something living inside you?
If you’ve ever had a parasite, you know just how icky
it can feel to know there’s something writhing around.
But what if I told you there are people on earth who
are excited to let parasites infest their bodies?
This is Gil Wizen’s Botfly Pregnancy.
And it’s super whack yo.
Autumn 2013, Entomologist and Photographer Gil Wizen, after
returning from Bugshot Belize, a photography workshop focusing on
macro photography of insects and other invertebrates, noticed a
series of three mosquito bites on his chest that wouldn’t go away.
They quickly turned red, started feeling itchier
over time, and emitted a slight pinprick sensation.
After spending time studying and photographing insects native to
Belize with Bugshot, Wizen suspected that the reason his mosquito bites
weren’t going away was because they actually harbored botfly larvae.
Only a couple days later, when the pricking and
itching intensified, was he able to confirm for sure.
Wasting no time, Wizen searched for medical advice, and found a medical
paper describing the removal of a botfly larva using a suction pump.
In a stroke of luck, the author of the paper
happened to live nearby, a quick bus ride away.
Wizen says that “There was much excitement at the Tropical
Diseases Clinic” as multiple doctors, nurses, and medical students
crowded around the Botfly infested man to watch the extraction.
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Staff removed three tiny larvae, quivering in front of the gathered
audience, and then sent Wizen back home, newly de-botflied.
Not long after, that evening, Wizen felt
another sharp pain in all three locations.
He left it, wanting to see if the pain would subside in the
following days, but to no avail, the pain only grew in intensity.
Soon what was just a sharp sting, became a “chest-stabbing, or
corkscrewing in pulses with heated iron” in Wizen’s word directly.
It was clear that there were more botflies in there,
and now that their siblings had been so ceremoniously
removed, they were growing faster than ever.
Two weeks later, Wizen took it upon himself to remove
one, and three weeks later managed to extract another.
The last he tried to remove, but failed.
It continued to grow, punctuating its existence by giving
Wizen what he calls “pseudo heart attacks several times every
night” until it finally passed away, and the wound sealed up.
If you’re a fan of extraction videos, you may already
be familiar with the process of removing a botfly.
There’s just something so satisfying about getting those little buggers
out there, but there’s a lot more to these wrigglers than meets the eye.
Ever since Brendan Fraser had to remove scarab beetles from
under John Hannah’s skin in 1999’s “The Mummy”, the image
of bugs crawling under skin lives rent free in my head.
Botflies, in their adult form, are actually
less spooky than their larval form suggests.
They are large, very hairy flies that
resemble a bumblebee more than anything else.
They’re just furry lil guys.
They live in Central and South America, and, good news,
aren’t known to pass on any disease causing pathogens!
Their larval forms do burrow under your skin though, which
admittedly, undercuts their cuteness, depends on who you ask.
The lifecycle of a Botfly begins with an egg-laden female,
who will search for another insect that feeds off of
blood, like mosquitos and ticks, to lay her eggs on.
If she spots a likely host, she’ll grab it mid-air, and drive it to
the ground where she’ll attach her eggs to the underside of the insect.
When the female is finished laying eggs, she’ll let her
prey go, where, hopefully, it finds a mammal to feed on.
If it does, the ambient heat from the mammal’s warm blood signals the
eggs to hatch, and they fall onto the skin, burrowing into their host’s
flesh in a process called myiasis, creating a raised lump called a warble.
The larva will make use of anything available,
including pores, hair follicles, and even the bug
bite itself to gain entry to your goopy insides.
If you had bugs under your skin, it probably wouldn’t
be the kind of experience you would cherish, but
Gil Wizen is built differently than the rest of us.
Wizen went forward and published a report on his botfly babies
alongside some of the medical staff that removed his progeny.
He wrote, “I wanted to keep one of these larvae until completion
of its development … As an Entomologist, I was eager to see
the adult fly, let alone this might be the only chance I
could give something in return after collecting and killing
many insects for my scientific work.” Which we applaud.
It’s good to give back.
I’d rather he do it than me.
Unfortunately, after removal, there were no flies left, and Wizen
thought he would never get another chance to father a litter of flies.
That is, until returning to Belize.
Wizen, upon arriving, immediately remembered the stabbing chest
pain, and did all he could to protect himself from mosquitos.
Layering on bug spray, covering up his skin, but lo and behold, when he
got home there was a fresh new botfly larva daintily embedded in his chest.
Wizen returned immediately to the Tropical Disease
Clinic, but his new larva was too small to be removed yet.
This, he thought, was a perfect opportunity to
step back and give it the space it needed to grow.
It was a nice bonus when Wizen realized
that this “pregnancy” wasn’t painful at all.
He could feel it moving under his skin, but there
was no discomfort this time— No painful contractions.
“I am keeping it” he decided, this was the one.
Wizen’s last botfly, having evaded removal, will start growing under his
skin, eventually passing through three different forms, called instars.
Each instar has a specific shape.
The first looks like a worm with a round fat head, the second looks
like a bottle gourd, the third looks like a fat little cylinder—
which incidentally, were all various forms I took during highschool.
All three instars have rows of small spines that go around
their thorax so they can anchor themselves in their hosts.
The whole lifespan of a larva inside of a host is between
5 to 12 weeks, but like most things in nature it varies.
In a study looking at botfly lifespans in rats, researchers
found that it took about 2 days for the larvae to burrow
under the skin, 7 days for them to molt into their second
instars, and 18 days to molt into their third instar.
Then, after around 30 days after the initial
infestation, the third instar emerges in order to pupate.
For the next 2 months Wizen nurtured his baby
botfly, carefully observing it as it grew inside him.
As a photographer, taking high quality photos was a priority.
But all through this process, Wizen maintained
his end goal of seeing an adult fly.
The last two weeks were tough, since the emergence of the
larva would be painless, and he didn’t want to miss it.
Now, it’s not like he would have full
grown adult flies popping out of his body.
Botflies live out their larval stage inside of a host, but
they crawl out, drop to the ground, and in ideal situations,
dig into the soil to pupate before growing into adults.
Of course, Wizen’s botfly wouldn’t be able to dig into soil
normally like it would from some wild animal, but if he lost the
pupa, his dream of being a doting father would quickly devolve into
one of those distant, never invited to Christmas type situations.
So as he laid back in a dentist chair, the piercing sound of dental
equipment ringing about the room, contractions rippled through his chest.
No, not now, he thought; if his little botfly baby
came out now, he’d have a lot of explaining to do.
You’d think that having to explain the last time
you flossed is the worst part of the dentist.
Ok, so you might be horrified, and rightfully so, but —good news!
In terms of parasites, botflies are actually one of the friendlier ones!
Yay science?
the fatty layer just above your muscles, feeding off exudate.
Parasites often trigger side effects that can harm their hosts.
We’ve talked about these at length in other videos.
But what makes the lowly botfly so nice is that it isn’t known
to harbor any diseases, it secretes an antibiotic serum which
disinfects the tissue around it, and it produces painkillers
which, ideally, prevent you from noticing it’s even there.
That said, sometimes the larvae hit a nerve, or some other sensitive spot
and give you a bad time, just like what happened to Wizen, but the point
is of all the parasites that can invade, it’s one of the best guests.
You’re more likely to catch some illness from the tick or mosquito that
carried and deposited the botfly eggs, than from the larvae themselves.
Wizen, sitting in the dentist chair, the wriggling
sensation of the botfly reverberating through his chest,
couldn’t help but think about his other lost botfly babies.
If it came out now, there would be no way for him to
safely get his newly pupating fly home from the dentist.
When Wizen’s larva finally emerged—thankfully the
dentist was a false alarm— he felt almost nothing.
He quickly snatched it up and put it into
a container where it began to pupate.
This is when Wizen’s postpartum anxiety set in.
How would he know if his baby was doing well?
After reading a paper from Lawrence Dunn describing his own botfly
pregnancy, our excited father-to-be was only gripped with more questions.
Did the larva burrow into the ground, or sit on top?
How long after emergence did the adults start activity?
Did he lose any of the larva during the pupation process?
How… moist was the pupation substrate?
Y’know, the kind of questions only entomologists ask.
His main concern was losing any of the larvae during pupation.
Wizen had heard about a ton of losses throughout his research, so
after months spent gestating these tiny larvae, Wizen wanted everything
to be perfect for his botfly to successfully survive pupation.
Pupation is the final stage before the botfly’s adulthood.
While they’re in the ground, the pupa will use two mustache looking
organs on their “front” called spiracles to breathe through the soil— an
iteration on the same organ used to breathe through the skin previously.
They don’t eat during this period, and after 2-3 weeks, an adult emerges.
Nearly blind, they use their extremely sensitive antennae
to search for males and females for the purpose of
getting down, since adult bot flies only live 8-9 days.
On top of that, adults don’t even have functioning mouths
to eat with, so their literal only purpose is to find a mate
and make more botfly babies, continuing the circle of life!
Wizen was elated one afternoon when, as he was checking on the
state of his pupa, he found no pupa at all, but an adult fly!
It was magnificent, at least in the entomological sense.
The piercing red of its eyes, contrasted against the shimmering blue
of its abdomen, dazzled Wizen, and as he gazed upon the creature,
he couldn’t help but feel like that fly was his own flesh and blood.
You may be thinking to yourself that Wizen must be some kind of outlier.
It’s not like people are lining up to get infested with botflies, right?
I’m happy to say that most people are not, but Wizen isn’t the
only person to look on the bright side of an insect infestation.
Entomologist Piotr Naskrecki, after returning from
the very same photography workshop as Wizen, found
that some of his mosquito bites weren’t healing.
As he looked closer, he saw that there were things living inside him.
His wounds weren’t painful, but Naskrecki wanted them gone anyway.
He removed one using a set of tweezers and a suction venom extractor.
After its removal, while gazing at the tiny larva he’d just
yanked out from under his skin, Naskrecki had a thought.
He said “I figured, that being a male, this was my only chance to
produce another living, breathing being out of my flesh and blood.”
Two months later, the remaining larvae
under Naskrecki’s skin began to emerge.
It took only about 40 minutes, and he could barely feel it happening.
He said that he might not have even noticed that they were coming out of
his skin if he wasn’t waiting for it, as the painkillers the larva uses
to disguise itself makes it one of the least invasive parasites out there.
Within a couple hours of leaving his body, the larva dug into some
soil Naskrecki had set aside in preparation, and began its final phase.
He notes that the pupa turned a dark shade of black and
nothing seemed to happen for a month and a half until, huzzah!
The now adult fly busted out of its pupa to live out
the next week and a half as a fully fledged botfly.
When it comes to how botflies evolved in the first
place, biologists have figured out two possible routes.
One, they could have evolved from other blood
sucking larval creatures like nest and floor maggots.
Or Two, they could have evolved from scavenger
insects that grow on decaying matter like screwworms.
Researchers believe that this route seems plausible for some
species of botflies, however other species that embed in nasal
cavities and the stomach might have evolved in a different way.
It’s hard to say exactly where they came from since each
species of botfly has a very specific creature that they invade.
For example, the botflies we’ve been talking about today
are Dermatobia hominis specifically, the human botfly.
Most species don’t trigger major side
effects, but there are some negative outcomes.
The main issue for people isn’t actually being hosts for
them, but losses from livestock who have become parasitized.
For example, the nasal botfly, which lives in the noses of sheep,
can sometimes irritate the host so badly that they stop eating.
There’s also intestinal botflies, which land on horses, irritating their
skin until they scratch with their mouth and swallow the parasites.
The larva, now growing inside the horse’s intestines, can trigger
ulcers, intestinal blockages, and even malnutrition symptoms.
The worst, though, is the bovine botfly.
These flies burrow into a cow’s heels, and then crawl their way under
the skin all the way to the cow’s back, where they poke out to breathe.
This can make cows jump erratically, which can injure
both cows themselves, and their human caretakers.
Earlier we mentioned that Naskrecki removed his first botfly using a
suction venom extractor and a set of tweezers, but there are other methods.
First of all, it’s best to have a physician remove the fly, as they’ll be
able to properly disinfect the wound and have access to the right tools.
Some medical staff remove the flies the same way pimples are treated
during a facial extraction, using a blunt instrument to gently squeeze the
larvae out from the warble where they can grab it with a set of tweezers.
If that doesn’t work, a more invasive procedure
cutting a small incision is necessary.
Another method includes putting something over the
fly’s breathing hole to force it out to the surface
where, again, you can grab it with a set of tweezers.
You can cover their breathing hole with
petroleum jelly, or even a strip of bacon!
Talk about pros and ba-CONS.
I’m sorry, I’ll see myself out.
When we talk about parasites, many people
feel a sense of visceral revulsion.
You’re grossed out, and it’s totally reasonable.
But the longer I look at their undulating
bodies the more beautiful they become.
Like we learned earlier, botfly larvae carry no major
diseases, they produce painkillers and antibiotics, and
even when they’re adults, they only live for about 10
days, so their impact as an invasive species is minimal.
When we look at the insect world, we often see something alien.
It’s normal to feel scared or repulsed when we see something “abnormal”.
But I think it goes to show that life has no obligation to make
sense to us, nor fit into what we, as humans, consider beautiful.
But at the end of the day, understanding the parts of our
world that might seem gross, gives us the maturity to walk
forward into a strange, revolting, and beautiful future.
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