… are almost guaranteed to enjoy this video of a botfly extraction from a human back!
Good grief. Fascinating watching that, though. Bet the guy felt much better after the extraction. Any info as to how many he had under his skin in total?
The worst part is that the guy extracting the larvae had filthy fingernails. I have to wonder whether the patient ever got real medical attention.
It looked like they were outside of some sort of tent… perhaps far away from a hospital. I suppose if they kept the wound clean, it would heal.
Hope they had enough disinfectant, then.
I have to wonder how one gets multiple botfly larvae embedded in their back. I can’t imagine having to have those things in my skin. Blech.
Botflies are disgusting. Cattle get cattle grubs sometimes, which emerge in a similar, uh, fashion.
barf.
That has got to scar pretty badly. Those things left craters in their wake.
It looks like they didn’t lie under the skin parallel to it like I would have imagined, it seemed to be pulled out straight from the deeper skin layers. So if he was bitten by a mosquito and the eggs deposited, do the hatched larvae carve out a little burrow in his skin layers? That’s crazy, and I imagine it’s got to hurt like hell, or at least itch.
The wet popping sound when the first one was finally “birthed?” Oh my.
Hmm, the web page with the URL given on the last frame (My Botfly - Botfly) lists three possible cures, of which the guy in the video appears to have tried the third:
They were pulling off duct tape to get at the larvae, so I guess this is what they tried; the other two solutions were to use the sap of a “botkiller” tree, which would kill the larvae but leave their corpses intact (yuk), and to cover the wound with a piece of raw meat, which cuts off the air supply for the maggot and causes it to come up and burrow into the meat.
Personally I would have tried that last approach myself first.
In the video the woman with the tweezers mentions feeling like the first larva is trying to pull back in, and they do seem to be wriggling/recoiling, which means they’re not dead yet… Which scenario the web page warns against: Don’t try to pull it out because it will burst. Part of its body will remain inside and cause an infection..
Ewwwwwww…! I hope that didn’t happen to this poor fellow!
I am never going to travel again… EVER
The human botfly. I’m a human, how come I’ve never heard of it? Seriously, it’s pretty jarring to learn that there’s a insect parasite, spread by mosquito bites, that burrows and grows vertically into the skin of its victims, and that it only does that to people. Because I’m initially thinking they’re like hookworms where a person could get them, but they’re mostly the bane of animals. But no, turns out burrowing into human skin is their raison d’être.
What with the global warming and all I’d expect these things will be migrating north shortly.
For more botfly fun, seeTHIS*
*not for the sqeamish.
…I mean, this is like learning there’s a species of lion in El Salvador that lives exclusively off of eating people. How could I have never heard of that before?
My eyes.
That dude’s back is SO hairy! Disgusting.
You can see its teeth.
Cool.
:eek: Wow! That was COOL! :eek:
I thought for you sure you were resurrecting a video posted by me in this thread… Favorite pimple stories (maybe TMI) - Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share - Straight Dope Message Board
if you search for “zip pop” on youtube, you’ll get all sorts of interesting video links, including the one referenced above of some dude get a boil on his back squeezed.
E3