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Every traveler ’s nightmare came true for Bryan Williams and Ally Vaag , two Australians vacationing in South America , when they made a gruesome discovery : Flesh - eating maggot were growing under their pelt .
The couple had been tour the Amazon Basin when they were fleck by mosquitoes , reports theNew Zealand Herald . But by the metre they had go to Bolivia , their bites had grow into oozy pustule that required medical attending to off the pocket-sized maggots living inside the wound .
The larvae of the human botfly grow under the skin of the host.
The maggots were the larvae of the human botfly ( Dermatobia hominis ) , a large fly that resembles a humblebee , consort to theUniversity of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences . Despite the horror - story sound of the infection , it ’s comparatively benignant .
" There ’s a great mythology about the botfly , but really , you just tear them out and blank out about it , " Dr. Marc Shaw of New Zealand ’s Worldwise Travelers Health and Vaccination Center told the Herald . " They ’re quite full-bodied slight blighters , but they fall out comparatively easy . "
The aliveness cycle of the botfly , a aboriginal of Central and South America , is rather unusual . The female botfly captures a line of descent - suck louse — normally a mosquito or tick — and deposits her orchis on the insect before releasing it .
When the mosquito or check mark snack a human being or another warm - full-blood mammal , the botfly eggs sense the change in temperature and hatch into tiny larva , enter the host ’s skin at the bite wound . Though the larvae feed on pus inside the skin , they still call for to breathe , which they do through tiny atmosphere holes at the skin ’s surface .
After about eight weeks , the maturate larvae will dribble out of the injury into the soil , where they dream up into fly botflies , according to theUniversity of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences .
Botflies are n’t know to circularise any infection , and they ’re relatively promiscuous to get free of : just cover the wound with petroleum jelly to strangle the larvae , then remove them with a pair of tweezers .
Shaw said the best ways to prevent a botfly transmission is to annul mosquito snack : wear long pant and sleeves , and using louse repellents , will usually keep botflies at bay .
