- Sometimes, the most outlandish strategy is the best.
As the famous saying goes, you should fight fire with fire. Well, perhaps not if you’re doing actual firefighting, but it’s apt in many other situations.
For instance, it works when you’re dealing with nightmarish flesh-eating flies.
The New World screwworm fly is once again rampaging through Central America and southern Texas. Already eradicated once, the fly somehow returned and is unleashing horror in its wake.
This particular fly likes to lay its eggs onto cows. Once they hatch, the maggots burrow into the flesh of the animal, leading to a slow and agonizing death.
Yet, part of why the fly is spreading like wildfire is that it’s not limited to terrorizing cattle. It can also ravage wildlife, household pets, and even humans.
Fortunately, the U.S. government has a plan. It aims to airdrop millions upon millions of the same flies into affected areas.
The catch is that these flies are sterile. They should eventually cause the fly population to collapse, essentially cuckolding them out of existence.
But the weirdest part is that this tactic works — and it works well.
The Man-eater Fly
Meet the Cochliomyia hominivorax. This is fly species better known as the New World screwworm fly.
They are not nice creatures.
In their larval stage, the flies are parasitic and like feeding on fresh meat. To provide her disgusting offspring with an ample supply of food, the female fly goes off in a search of a suitable host animal, preferably a cow or a bull.
When the fly finds one, it seeks out an open wound on the animal. If it doesn’t find one, an exposed mucus membrane, like a nostril, will do in a pinch.
The eggs sit there for a bit until they hatch. Then the horror show begins. For a description, allow us to quote the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
“[The maggots] burrow into the wound, feeding as they go like a screw being driven into wood. Maggots cause extensive damage by tearing at the hosts’ tissue with sharp mouth hooks,” the USDA writes.
As the maggots feast, they enlarge the wound and cause it to become necrotic. This attracts more screwworm flies that lay down more eggs — and the problem soon gets out of hand.
“A thousand-pound bovine can be dead from this in two weeks,” Michael Bailey, president-elect of the American Veterinary Medicine Association, told CBS News.
Yet, the flies also have a taste for meats other than beef. They can lay their eggs in wildlife or household pets alike.
Or, they could do it to you. After all, the name of the species — hominivorax — translates roughly to “man-eater.”
Bouncing Back
The thing about the screwworm fly is that we already kicked its butt once. In the late ‘50s and early ‘60s, a successful eradication campaign virtually wiped the fly out.
However, it wasn’t a total victory. The fly remained in parts of northern Panama, despite control operations that have been going on for nearly 60 years.
Late last year, the flies broke containment. They appeared in southern Mexico and quickly began spreading northward.
By now, they have reached southern Texas. All along the way, they have infected cattle, pets, and people, causing significant damage and terror.
To C*** Block a Fly
So, what’s there to do about the flies? Well, the U.S. government plans to do the same thing they did last time the flies became an issue.
They’re going to throw more flies at them.
This method is known as the sterile insect technique. Although it seems counterproductive, it’s actually a very effective method to control the buzzing pests.
You see, the flies’ biology has one exploitable quirk. Over their three-week-long lifespan, the female flies only mate once.
The sterile insect technique relies on dumping millions, if not billions, of specially-bred sterile male flies out of airplanes into screwworm fly-infested areas. Basically, the plan is to saturate the area with castrated flies to the point that it becomes impossible (or at least incredibly unlikely) for the females to find a male with a loaded gun, so to speak.
Consequently, the females will waste the only bang of their lives on a sterile male. Thus, they’ll lay very few eggs, and eventually the fly population dies out.
This technique sounds a bit odd, but it is incredibly effective (albeit time-consuming) method. It worked last time, and experts have no doubts that it will work again.
That said, you will need to drop a lot of flies out of planes for it to work. To that end, the U.S. is currently rebuilding and reactivating two old fly production facilities — one in Texas and one in Mexico — to breed sterile flies.
So, if you’ve been looking to start a completely new career, they’re probably going to start hiring soon.