22 February 2010

Removing botfly larvae


Wikipedia suggests that these pests have been documented in "copious art dating back to the Pleistocene" (?).   Snopes has photos showing the removal of a larva from a child's eye.

Explanation here re relationship of the fly and the mosquito as vector.

Via Darker Me

Addendum: Please view the captcha in M. Titam's comment.  LOL.

8 comments:

  1. Oh my lord, the zoom... the zoom!! I'm itching all over now.

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  2. Ack, I'm glad I live in Texas, where one merely has to contend with flying cockroaches. Usually I think bugs are cool, but this is too much.

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  3. Bon appétit.
    By the way, you'll never guess what my word verification for this comment was... Couldn't be better, I swear.

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  4. I refuse to look and spoil my day!
    Le Loup.

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  5. I'm not looking at this either!

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  6. Oh that was nasty. I was on my lunch/google reader break when I saw this too... :P But the pictures from the snopes link are maybe 2-3x worse than the vid. I could stomach the vid, but the worm in the eye... EW. (reaction possibly due to the color red :0)

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  7. This reminded me of Dracunculus medinensis, a parasite that is extracted from the vein in the leg by slowly wrapping it around a stick. Some say it is the origin of the medical emblem (Rod of Asclepius).

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