Five squirming fly larvae pulled from Colorado man's head

July 17, 2007, 11:06PM
Associated Press


CARBONDALE, COLO. — Doctors thought the strange, bleeding bumps on Aaron Dallas' head might be from gnat bites or shingles. Then the bumps started moving.

A doctor found five active bot fly larvae living beneath the skin atop Dallas' head.

"I'd put my hand back there and feel them moving. I thought it was blood coursing through my head," Dallas told the (Glenwood Springs) Post Independent.

"I could hear them. I actually thought I was going crazy."

Dallas said he likely received the larval infestation while on a trip to Belize this summer. Bot fly infections are not uncommon in parts of Central and South America.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/bizarre/4976731.html

:puke:

bots are interesting, ususally species specific parasites. Cattle here in North Americat get them. They totally gross me out, but still not as much as screw worms - real maggots that infest wounds...:scared: :puke:

They only eat dead flesh and infected flesh, leaving healthy tissue behind. For some persistent wounds that don't heal, maggot therapy is used. A bunch of maggots raised in sterile conditions are placed in the wound and closed up with a bandage. The maggots get to work, and after a few days, are removed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maggot_therapy

I read somewhere this account of a doctor who saw a patient with maggots in a festering wound. The maggots were removed, and the patient died a few days later due to the infection. If the maggots had been left inside to finish the job, the patient would have survived.

I freak out when I see a caterpillar, FEELING larvae crawling around IN MY FLESH would probably cause a heart attack.

Strangely, snakes and spiders don't bother me at all.

I'm going to be sick.

That's almost worse than the earwig thing! :puke:

Ew ew ew!!!!

they are nasty little buggers.. they don't want to come out, naturally.

If you pull them out they grab hold with the spikes and can break open and cause horrible infection.

My Bio Prof got one in his arm when he went to Amazon birding...he smoked a couple of packs of cigarettes through a hanky until it was good and brown then tied it around where the bot was. After a day or so, the nicotine in the tar anesthetized the bot larvae and then he was able to pull it out....

yuuuk....

Please give a toutorial!.....

It was in his neck; likely caused by a mosquito bearing eggs. I couldn't afford a vet, but a vet talked me through it. It is very important not to break the worm...

you CAN find pics of them on the net if you look (but you'll wish you didn't)!!

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=bot+flies&search=

i heard of this a couple of years ago and the idea of it so disgusted me that i permanently cancelled any idea of traveling to belize or costa rica (really, central america). awful!!!!:(

Google Immage "dracunculus" and you'll see why.

Disgustingly cool.

I'm sure the NSA will be looking into it though.

Horses and cattle get them. Rabbit that live in hutches get them also. You have to cut a hole over them and "POP" them out real fast by squeezing the skin together underneath them so they can't hang on and break open. This causes them them to fly up about a foot. It is gross and scary.

The vet at first didn't recognize what was wrong. Then she was treated with a human treatment for typhus (had to go to an old fashioned pharmacy that mixed the medicine there.

She was 14 yo, not an ounce of fat on her and very active when this occurred. Sad to say that she quickly went down hill. She stopped eating & drinking and I attempted to force feed her pedialyte and brought her in several times for IVs while she recovered. She appeared to get a little better, was well enough for Thanksgiving dinner but afterward went straight downhill. When she got to the point that she was able to walk, we put her to sleep. She was my first dog and went into my shop w me every day. She was a once in a lifetime dog.

Or did the vet miss it entirely? They would come out eventually. Sorry about you little dog.:-( O8)

He let them grow until they metamorphosed, then caught and pinned them. They're actually not painful - they secrete an antibiotic and a painkiller. Still I would rather not do what he did.

However, the worst thing along these lines that I have heard of is dentists that use maggots. Yes, dentists.

the grossest thing I have ever heard of. And I have seen and heard of some doozies.

there are multiple larvae in the hole.

I've seen the occasional case of Cuterebra.

Chapter called "Jerry's Maggot",
"Tropical Nature" by Adrian Forsyth and Ken Miyata.

Story is about a graduate biology student named Jerry, at Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology ... his first field experience at a field course in tropical ecology in Costa Rica.

I have the book at home. At work now, so I had to hunt for this excerpt online. It's incomplete because it does not include the part about putting a steak on the botfly mound to entice it out. But it's a pretty funny read!

A few weeks before Jerry was due to return to the Museum, his head began to itch. This was hardly remarkable. Skin fungus, chigger and mosquito bites, and a wealth of other pruriginous rot are the lot of field biologists in the lowland tropics, as he and his fellow students were by then well aware.......At first, Jerry assumed that the itch on his scalp was a mosquito bite, as indeed it was. But unlike the usual mosquito bite, this one did not subside. It grew larger, forming a small mound, and besides scratching, Jerry began to worry. After several days of private fretting he sought help. One of his fellow students, a medical entomologist, agreed to examine the wound. Her diagnosis sent a chill of fear through poor Jerry. Poking out of a tiny hole in his scalp was a wiggling insect spiracle. A hideous little botfly maggot was living inside the skin on his head and eating his flesh! This intimacy with nature was a little too much for Jerry, and he ran around in circles crying for the removal of the maggot.
...
Anyway, due to the absence of suitable surgical equipment the larvae was not removed and by the time Jerry got back to New England he had actually grown rather fond of his guest and had abandoned thoughts of a medical solution, and decided to let nature take its course. Sudden death at the jaws of a large carnivore or the brief bite of a flea do not provide one the opportunity to reflect on the transmutative nature of predation and parasitism. But for the minor expense of a few milligrams of flesh, Jerry could both contemplate and feel process at his leisure. He was inside a food chain, rather than at its end. Jerry grew fond of his bot and the bot grew fat on Jerry.

While sitting in the bleachers at Fenway Park one evening watching the Red Sox fall prey to the Yankees, Jerry felt the beginning of the end. Protruding from the goose egg atop his scalp was a quarter inch of botfly larva. Over the course of the evening this protrusion grew, and eventually the bristly, inch-long larva fell free. Jerry prepared a glass jar with sterilized sand to act as a nursery for his pupating bot, but despite his tender ministrations the larva dried out and died before it could encase itself in a pupal sheath.


oh ... my head feels itchy! :rofl:

This is a catfish found in the Amazon river. It's attracted to urine, and swims into the source. Yep, right into it, gets tightly lodged using spines, and hurts like hell.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candirú

Documentary segment at http://digg.com/videos/educational/Parasitic_Fish_Swims_up_a_Man_s_Penis
(I think I originally saw this on one of the Discovery Channel documentaries)

:puke:

Morgellons --fibers seem to grow out of legions in the skin in this disease that is baffling doctors...

http://morgellonswatch.com/

on Youtube, these "fibers" are "Morgellons organisms" that seem to come alive.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKW0bCcfvPE