Cochliomyia hominivorax

Imagine a tiny fly, a bit like a housefly but with a special job. This is the Cochliomyia hominivorax! Its babies, called maggots, are the ones that get all the attention.

Unlike many maggots that munch on dead things, these little guys love to eat living, warm-blooded animals. They are found in warm places like the tropics of the Americas. It's a good thing they are not everywhere, because they can cause trouble for animals!

A grown-up screwworm fly is about the size of a regular housefly. But its real story is about its babies! Female flies lay their eggs in open wounds on animals.

Soon, tiny maggots hatch and start eating the animal's flesh. This is called myiasis. The maggots grow bigger and bigger, and the wound gets worse.

This can make the animal very sick. It's like a tiny, hungry monster party happening inside a wound!

Guess what? Scientists found a super clever way to stop these flies! They raised millions of male screwworm flies and made them sterile, which means they couldn't have babies.

Then, they released these sterile males into the wild. When these sterile males mated with wild female flies, no new screwworm maggots were born! This amazing trick helped get rid of the flies from the United States and parts of Central America for a long time.

It was like a giant bug-fighting mission!

Even though we got rid of them in many places, screwworm flies can still be found in parts of South America and the Caribbean. Sometimes, they pop up in new places, like Mexico recently. This means we have to be careful!

When animals travel from these areas, people check them to make sure no screwworm flies are hitching a ride. It’s important to keep our animals safe from these hungry little maggots.