{"id":167933,"date":"2025-09-25T07:47:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-25T07:47:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/167933\/"},"modified":"2025-09-25T07:47:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-25T07:47:10","slug":"the-horrors-of-the-human-botfly-why-evolution-is-true","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/167933\/","title":{"rendered":"The horrors of the human botfly \u2013 Why Evolution Is True"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I have recounted previously how, when visiting Costa Rica as a graduate student, I got a <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Dermatobia_hominis\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">human botfly larva<\/a> (Dermtobia hominis) in my head, and, over the next two months, let it grow between my scalp and my skull until it emerged.<\/p>\n<p>My story was the subject of a Science Friday segment on NPR that you can hear by clicking below. Press \u201clisten\u201d; my segment begins at 43:38 and lasts 12 minutes. I think they did a fantastic job, even interviewing my girlfriend at the time, who was present when the botfly larva emerged from my head.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/radiolab.org\/podcast\/91672-yellow-fluff-and-other-curious-encounters\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-572450 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Screen-Shot-2025-09-23-at-5.39.53-AM.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"686\" height=\"231\"  \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>And below is a great short video of the natural history of this fly produced by my Harvard colleague <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mcz.harvard.edu\/people\/piotr-naskrecki\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Piotr Naskrecki<\/a>. It shows a botfly emerging from a human arm. Note how amazing this creature is: the fly larva not only produces an antibiotic to prevent it from being attacked by microbes while it\u2019s gestating, but also a painkiller\u00a0 that makes its exist painless (if a host felt it emerging, it might slap and kill the larva). Evolution is amazing!<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>h\/t: Sally, Sarah<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I have recounted previously how, when visiting Costa Rica as a graduate student, I got a human botfly&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":167934,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[49,48,66,323],"class_list":{"0":"post-167933","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=167933"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167933\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/167934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=167933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=167933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=167933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}