Maybe this should have went in the Nope thread. But it's educational kind of...
DIY Bot Fly
Entomologists are not like other people. Lucky enough to score a cool parasitic larva burrowing in your skin after a visit to Central America? The obvious thing to do is to rear your maggot out in your body until it’s an adult fly. For science.
In the last week, two entomologists proudly issued bot fly “birth” announcements of their little monsters. For one of them, it was his second try at rearing out the flesh-eating maggots to adults. (His first unsuccessful attempt at bot fly rearing in 2013 did result in a research publication, though, so it wasn’t a wasted effort.)
Piotr Nasrecki documented the entire process of his bot fly maggot rearing in a fascinating video. Yes, there is some blood. But you’ll also learn a lot about flies. And entomologists.
Below are excerpts from both scientists’ accounts of their maggoty pregnancies; I highly recommend reading both. Both Naskrecki and Wizen have written great explanations of the bot fly life cycle, with beautiful photos.
Quote:
“Raising two dipteran [fly] children was an interesting experience. It was embarrassing on a few occasions, when both of my arms started bleeding profusely in public; painful at times, to the point of waking me up in the middle of the night; and inconvenient during the last stages of the flies’ development, when I had to tape plastic containers to my arms to make sure that I will not lose the emerging larvae. But other than those minor discomforts it was really not a big deal. Perhaps my opinion would have been different had the bot flies decided to develop in my eyelids, but I actually grew to like my little guests, and watched their growth with the same mix of pleasure and apprehension as when I watch the development of any other interesting organism under my care.”
Piotr Naskrecki
Sitting at my dentist chair for 40 minutes and suffering through the shrill sound of the ultrasonic cleaner, I suddenly started to feel contractions from my chest. Oh, no. Not now. Is it really happening? If it happens now this will be a visit I will never forget. Am I getting into labor?… In the end, the contractions I felt at the dentist were a false alarm, and I could not feel anything when the larva eventually emerged.
Gil Wizen
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