the.com/botfly
nature's worst houseguest, it grows up rent-free inside your skin.
means A botfly is a stout, hairy fly whose larvae develop as parasites inside the flesh of mammals — including, occasionally, humans.
from The 'bot' here is the real star: 'bot' (also spelled 'bott') is an old word, recorded since the 1500s, for the maggot or larva of these flies, especially the ones found in horses and cattle. Its deeper roots are murky — possibly from a Gaelic or Celtic source, possibly imitative — but it long named the worm before it named the fly. 'Fly' is the plain old Germanic word for a flying insect, a cousin of 'flee' and 'flutter,' from the simple sense of something that flies. So a botfly is, quite literally, the fly that comes from the bot.
- egg delivery
- glues eggs to mosquitoes, hijacking them as couriers
- living tenant
- larva breathes through a hole in your flesh
- removal trick
- suffocate with bacon or glue to evict it
- lifespan
- adults can't even eat, surviving days to mate
- global reach
- human botflies thrive across Central and South America
dermatobia hominis — parasitic botfly found in central and south america that lays eggs on mosquitoes, infecting humans
cordylobia anthropophaga — tumbu fly endemic to sub-saharan africa that burrows into skin causing boils
gasterophilus intestinalis — horse botfly whose larvae infect equines worldwide, historically common in pre-antibiotic human cases