How Do Maggots Become Flies?
Dead bodies, decaying vegetable matter, garbage dumps and anything that's fecund, fetid or rotting are prime territory for maggots. Sometimes the small, squirmy white critters will be writhing atop a pile of festering trash, while other times you may note rippling and squirming motions beneath a dead animal's skin. Maggots quickly develop into flies, which enjoy the same festering conditions.
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Eggs
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Flies lay mushy blobs of creamy white eggs that soon hatch into maggots. The flies need not lay eggs directly on the rotting or decaying matter but somewhere in its general vicinity. Each egg hatches into a small, wormy, white maggot. Eggs can hatch in as few as 8 hours, or often take up to 20, with hotter weather leading to a quicker hatching time, according to Worsley School. Planet Natural notes that flies lay anywhere from 2 to 21 blobs of eggs at a time, and each blob consists of about 130 eggs.
Maggots
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Maggots hatch as larvae, each measuring up to 0.35 inch long, according to Worsley School. The larvae immediately wiggle to their target area and begin to burrow, then feed, on the decaying or rotting matter. Once they've eaten their fill, they squirm to a cooler, drier area to reach their pupal stage, which is not much larger than the larvae. Larvae become pupae in 3 to 7 days, according to Planet Natural. The length of the pupal stage varies, depending on the temperature, with the warmest weather accelerating the stage to as few as 3 days.
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Flies
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The pupal then develops into an adult fly, which is immediately ready and able to breed. Male and female flies unite, the female lays egg blobs, and the cycle repeats itself. Adult flies generally live about a month. The entire fly life cycle, from egg to adult, can take as few as 6 days, Planet Natural notes, with optimum conditions producing at least two generations of flies each month.
Warning
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Maggots do not only infest and feed on dead things. Live pets, livestock and even humans can be targets of flies and maggots. Animals that are kept in filthy conditions or those with open wounds are especially at risk, as flies are attracted to such filth, blood and even eye secretions from livestock and horses. Once hatched, the maggots attack the living being the same way they attack a carcass, proceeding to eat the living being while it is still alive.
Benefits
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As detrimental as they can be to live animals or households, maggots do have their benefits, Worsley School states. They work to break down rotting material so nutrients can seep back into the soil. They also help clean up roadkill and other rotting carcasses by eating off the flesh. "Maggot therapy" was popular during the Civil War and is still found in today's American and European hospitals. Laboratories grow maggots to use for cleaning out wounds and speeding up healing, as the maggots eat the dead flesh and tissue.
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References
- Photo Credit Mouche image by Franco DI MEO from Fotolia.com
