I have no idea why, as humans, we insist on thrusting the Worst Ever Things in front of our eyeballs in the name of entertainment, but we love it.
Got intense tryptophobia? I bet you sometimes sadistically google those awful lotus pod images.
Immediately streamed that horror movie where someone carves their hand off, even though you know you’ll never get the image out of your head? You sick fuck. You totally did.
Here’s something I’m personally really enjoying, and yet in a very real way has ruined my life – botfly larvae removal videos.
Here’s my favourite.
At first, I thought they were going to remove a proper FLY from this woman’s arm. Like a living, flying insect monster was going to wriggle out. That would have been cool, but this is even BETTER.
It’s like watching pimple popping videos except on crack because they’re tweezing out living larvae from someone’s flesh.
This video literally has a warning because it’s so fucked up.
This woman had one in her HEAD. IN HER FUCKING HEAD, GUYS. Absolutely not, I’d rather just have my head cut off tbh. I’d rather just burn my entire scalp off.
Obviously I went on this intense Google to learn about botflies so this can never, ever, EVER happen to me. Here’s what the human botfly (the only one that uses humans to host it’s eggs, foulfoulfoulfoul) looks like:
It’s not the fly that lays eggs in you though, which is fucking terrifying – they use mosquitos as egg hosts basically, so then if you get bitten by a mosquito with botfly eggs on it, those eggs can get into the bite. Botflies are native to the Americas from Southeastern Mexico to northern Argentina, Chile and Uruguay.
So just never go to any of those places, ever – I don’t care if they’re PRETTY and full of CULTURE. They’re also full of fucking botflies.
The larvae develop inside the subcutaneous layers of human skin, which I googled and literally means “under the skin”. Whatever. It’s not important, we’re not here for a biology lesson or a science lesson or whatever that lesson would be. I have no idea, I dropped out of science in Year 9 ‘coz it’s for NEEEERDS. Kidding you’re smarter than me science folk.
Anyway, after approximately eight weeks, the larvae drop out to pupate for at least a week in soil. What? I think this means if you just left them there, they’d just drop out of your skin. Since they can also pupate in animals this maybe makes sense but fuck me dead if a human being willingly does this.
If you DO ignore my advice and go to these places, and then happen to get botflied – apparently the easiest and most effective way to remove the larvae is to use petroleum jelly over the spot. It stops air from reaching the larva, suffocating it. Then you can then be removed it tweezers safely after a day. Yeah, you have to just sit there knowing you have a larvae under your skin for a day.
Wasn’t this a great science lesson, guys? Don’t you feel really calm and also not at all itchy/terrified?
