(suspenseful music)
(woman screaming)
- They can't like burrow into my foot, can they?
Could that happen, Mario?
(upbeat music)
It's a beautiful day for a maggot box.
A beautiful day for a maggot.
Will they eat meat?
Will they eat feet?
It's a maggoty day for a maggot box
with 300,000 flesh eating maggots.
Will they eat meat?
Will they eat my feet?
Ugh, it's time to feed my maggots.
Hello, maggots.
Oh boy.
How have I find myself in this seat yet again?
Coyote Peterson in front of a container filled
with creatures that very well may eat him alive.
Well, I've always been curious as to whether or not
maggots eat human flesh alive or dead.
And today we're going to answer that question,
but before we get into the entertainment
and my feet go into this container with 300,000 maggots,
first we need to learn something
about these creepy creatures.
So we're going to take the Science Train
to the Ohio State University
and learn a little something about these creatures.
Choo-choo.
Do, do, do, do, do, do.
Choo-choo.
As a graduate of the Ohio State University,
I'm returning to campus to learn more about maggots
before I serve myself up as a meal.
So I'll be chatting with Dr. Julie.
She studies bugs and how they survive during the winter,
specifically insect diapause
which is a state of suspended animation
similar to mammal and reptile hibernation.
Maggots are an ideal test subject for her research
because like John Snow,
they can sense when winter is coming.
Okay Julie, let's get right down to it.
I think we all wanna know what exactly is a maggot?
- Yeah, so a maggot is an immature stage of any kind of fly.
- So a maggot is a baby fly then essentially.
- Yes.
- I could see the similarity to human babies,
soft and squishy and round,
and you know-
- Yeah, except they have an exoskeleton.
- Literally there's an exoskeleton on the maggot?
- On the maggot yeah.
- Going from larva to pupa,
maggots obviously need to fuel up.
What would you say maggots primarily feast on?
- Maggots like to eat rotting stuff
like dead carcasses or roadkill in the woods.
- If given the option,
will they eat human flesh?
- So that's kind of a tricky question to answer.
A lot of them will only eat dead stuff,
but there are some that will burrow
into human flesh if given the chance.
- So maggots will technically eat humans
if given the chance.
Some species.
- Some species.
How fascinating was that?
And now that we've set up the science,
it's time to perform an experiment of our own.
Now perhaps you noticed the beautiful meat socks
that I was sporting earlier on.
That's right,
these are sirloin wrapped in bacon.
And if you're envious of these incredible socks,
don't worry,
they're for sale right now at shopbraveywilderness.com
because we figured who doesn't want meat socks
for the holidays.
Now those socks aren't necessarily gonna attract
the attention of maggots.
So what we've constructed today
is a real meat sock if you would.
Thank you, sir.
- Ugh
Take a look at that.
It's chicken skin sewed together with bacon.
Now we're gonna stick one of my feet with nothing on it.
Live human flesh down and into the maggots.
On my other foot will be the meat sock.
Will the maggots be able to tell the difference
between a living human foot
and a living human foot covered in dead meat?
Now have you ever heard of meat socks?
- I have not heard of meat socks.
Tell me more.
- You've not heard of meat socks.
This is specimen number 001.
Take a look at this here.
- Wow, that's some pretty fancy sewing.
- Yeah, what do you have to say about that?
- That's impressive.
I've never seen anybody make socks out of bacon before.
- Now this is the meat sock that we have composed
that my foot will go inside of to see if the maggots
will not only eat the dead rotting skin-
- Yeah.
- But go through the skin and,
thank you for that,
into my feet.
Have you ever thought about crafting a pair of meat socks
so that you can become a human experiment for your maggots?
- I have not.
- We could help.
- Yeah.
- You come up with this design and advance it further.
- Sure.
My maggots really like to eat liver.
- Okay.
- So maybe some liver socks.
- Perhaps the sole of the sock
that we could go sort of more of a shoe.
- Yeah.
- We've got a liver sole and a chicken skin outer
and what we really love about our design specifically
is the bacon brim.
- The bacon brim is a nice touch.
- My foot is going into the meat sock.
Oh, that is very slimy.
And my foot is in.
Ooh, my foot is encased in chicken skin and bacon.
Okay, here we go.
Just do it Coyote,
just go for it.
Oh wow they're really warm.
Generating a lot of heat.
Oh, that is a real weird feeling.
It feels like warm rice.
All right.
So I'm working my foot down and into the maggots.
Oh, that is a really, really, really weird feeling.
Now it's time to add in the delectable meat sock.
Oh, that is weird.
I can feel them all moving around the edges of the sock.
All right, I'm to slowly massage the meat sock down
and into the maggots.
Oh they are very, very dense
and very, very squiggly.
Now the clock begins.
My feet are completely submerged
and now it's time to sit back
and find out whether or not
maggots will feast on human flesh.
The life cycle of a fly breaks down
into four distinct phases.
First, a female lays a batch of eggs
in some type of decaying organic matter.
The process is quick,
as these eggs will hatch in less than 24 hours.
This is the second stage
known as larva or maggot.
These hungry baby flies gorge themselves
in order to grow
and eventually molt into their next stage,
pupa.
During this stage,
they develop a cocoon like shell
that looks like a mouse turd,
where they go dormant and do not move or eat.
Inside the cocoon they metamorphasize,
growing wings, antenna and legs.
Just like Jeff Goldblum in the mid eighties,
they hatch out as a fully grown fly
and the cycle repeats itself.
My feet have been in here for about 30 minutes
and I can feel that the maggots are beginning
to work their way into the meat sock.
So they're now maggots in between
the chicken skin and the human skin.
And I don't know where things are gonna go from there,
but I'm a little nervous about this foot at this point.
The thing that doesn't translate is the smell.
This smell of these maggots
which just smells like rotting flesh
is just made me completely grossed out at this point.
If you examine a single maggot under a microscope
you will see that they lack any weaponry
for harvesting flesh.
No teeth, beaks,
Freddie Krueger hands or venom laced probascus.
Whoa, whoa, whoa.
Something might be happening with the meat sock foot.
I'm experiencing some sort of pain
on the inner curve of my foot.
Instead maggots have creepy mouth hooks
that allow them to grapple and pull their rough skin bodies
scraping like a cheese grater over dead flesh
as they squirm through a carcass.
I might be getting bitten.
It's tough to tell,
but it definitely feels like a pinching sensation.
During this process,
they also secrete enzymes called peptidases
that liquefy flesh proteins.
And when you have thousands of maggots
doing this all at once,
it makes for a deliciously disgusting corpse stew
that can easily be slurped down.
No teeth needed for this meaty feast.
I'm just afraid that once I take the meat sock off
I'm gonna see like a magnet has burrowed.
They can't like burrow into my foot can they?
Could that happen, Mario?
It's something that everyone's gonna find
out at the end of this episode.
It has been several hours
with my feet submerged
into the box of 300,000 maggots.
We are going to pull my feet up and out of the box
to analyze what they look like.
Now the first foot we're gonna pull out is my left foot.
Remember, this one had no meat sock on it.
Wow, my foot's like completely asleep
because it hasn't moved in so long.
So I'm gonna bring it up very, very slowly.
It's so warm.
Oh, that feels so weird.
Look at all the maggots that have collected
in between my toes.
Eh.
It does not appear as if this foot
has taken any impactful nibbles or bites.
Now we're gonna take out the foot with the meat sock.
Now, it's important to note that I've taken
a couple of nibbles on this foot
and the maggots have definitely gone to town
on at least eating the bacon.
So let's see if any of the rest of the meat sock
has any holes burrowed into it.
Here we go.
Look at that.
The maggots have worked their way into the seams
and all into the bacon.
The sock itself is pretty filled with maggots.
Should we take off the sock?
Okay.
Oh, oh.
Look at all the maggots pouring out of it.
Oh.
All right,
so now what I want to do is analyze
where I think I was bitten.
Okay, right here,
there is a very, very hard to see.
Looks like a little red dot there.
Some sort of nibble.
Nothing though that has actually burrowed into my foot.
Wow.
Look at that.
The maggots have completely engulfed the meat sock
that quickly.
Hold on, don't get too lost in there yet.
Look at that.
They completely sucked it down into there.
Let's watch that again.
All right I'm just gonna go ahead and keep filming this.
So what you're witnessing here
are the maggots
quickly engulfing the meat sock.
It's exactly what they would do in nature
whether with decomposing animal or plant matter.
They essentially envelop it
and slowly begin to feast.
Okay, my feet were inside the box of maggots
for several hours and as you can see,
they're both still fully intact
which I think helps us answer today's question.
Do maggots eat living human flesh?
And the answer to that is absolutely not.
And while it's fair to note that I was nibbled
on a couple of times,
those nibbles did not break skin
and certainly did not draw blood.
In my opinion,
maggots get a bad rap.
I mean they're creepy,
they're squirmy and they're always associated with death,
but that's not necessarily a bad thing.
Remember, these are natural decomposers.
They're cleaning up the environment
by breaking down plant and animal matter.
So what we learned today is they're not going to eat you
if you stumble upon them.
And the next time you see a big swarm of them
consuming an animal carcass,
remember they're simply doing their job.
I'm Coyote Peterson The Brave.
Stay wild.
We'll see you on the next adventure.