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Gadfly: They don’t bite, they don’t have a mouth. Their danger is much more hidden, but stereotypes have confused people
Have you ever been accused of something you didn’t do? Gadflies face this all the time.
Botflies are flies and are often blamed for causing painful bites. But this is the mistake: gadflies do not bite at all. They don’t have an oral apparatus! Some species have a semblance of a proboscis, but it is of little use. Adult gadflies are aphagous, that is, they do not feed at all. Their main task is to leave offspring.
And here lies the reason why they are not loved. Females lay eggs on the skin and fur of mammals. And some species even penetrate the nasopharynx of animals, where conditions are ideal for the development of larvae.
Botflies can look like bees, which helps them ward off predators. The larvae, hatching from eggs, penetrate into tissues and feed on the juices of the host. The degree of animal suffering depends on where exactly the larvae are parasitizing. Gadflies are divided into 4 subfamilies: nasopharyngeal, subcutaneous, American and gastric subcutaneous.
Parasites spend several months in the host’s body, but grow only from the outside.
When the larvae reach the desired size, they gnaw their way out and fall to the ground, where they turn into adult insects, harmless to the host.
Gadflies can also parasitize humans, although this is rare in our country – more often they prefer ungulates. But in Southeast Asia and Africa, these insects like to live on people.
Some anthropologists believe that the habit of squeezing pimples in people is associated with the fight against botfly larvae, which visually resemble ulcers.
Farmers use different methods to protect livestock. For example, special checkers that act as mosquito coils, or anti-mosquito suits for horses to protect them from gadflies.
So where does the myth that gadflies bite come from? It’s all about confusion: they are often mistaken for horse flies, which actually bite. In the eyes of most people, all flies look the same, hence the misunderstanding.