Kind: captions
Language: en
[Music]
you know it sounds weird but I felt an
almost almost father-child relationship
with this organism that was growing in
my body a few years ago I was in Belize
teaching a course in macro photography
and while there I was bitten a lot by
mosquitoes I realized that some of my
mosquito bites were not really healing
and when I looked closely I could see
something moving in there like a thin
little straw like structure that emerges
from the wound every now and then to
take a gulp gulp of air and being an
entomologist I realized that this is a
breathing tube of a botfly because of
their very interesting life cycle they
are very difficult to see the butterfly
is a female catches a mosquito in flight
and holds it and blues the eggs to the
abdomen of the mosquito
when the eggs detect the heat of the
body of the house they immediately
hatched and then they crawl into the
hall made by the proboscis of the
mosquito obviously even me as as an
entomologist
I had this initial reaction of a slight
slight revulsion but but that lasted for
about three seconds and then I I thought
oh what a fantastic chance for me to
actually see the entire process and
document it and show it to the world
removing the larvae is actually quite
difficult because the body of the of the
larvae is covered with the backward
pointing spines so that if you try to
pull it out you run the risk of this
membrane get a venom extractor is
essentially a reverse syringe rather
than pushing their air out it sucks it
in and creates a vacuum and the larvae
just popped out completely undamaged
they pump you with painkillers so you
don't know that you have them and they
produce antibiotics so that the one
doesn't Fester
it wasn't it wasn't painful it wasn't
unpleasant it was very interesting it
took 45 minutes for the larva to come
out of my skin I prepared a special
container in about three or four hours
it turned into the poop area which is
kind of an equivalent of butterflies
chrysalis the experience of having a
butterfly made me realize that we
ourselves are an ecosystem