Flesh flies(????)

[TheBeesKnees]

My wild caught girl enjoys wild caught meals, and being a kind of "paranoid mom", I always monitor her meals to make sure nothing strange happens.

Today, something strange happened.

I feed her medium to large sized flies, and today for lunch, I had managed to catch her a medium sized one. She caught it, and almost the moment she did so, several TINY maggots started crawling out of the fly's abdomen. Having watched and read a variety of things about insect parasites just last night, my brain went full "red alert" mode. I immediately encouraged the mantis to drop the meal, and I collected the fly, as well as every last maggot that writhed it's way out of the fly's rear (and a large chunk of the soil around and under them) and flushed it all down the toilet. Being no stranger to the world of insects, it certainly wasn't the gnarliest thing I had encountered, but when it's my beloved pet on the line, it's suddenly a lot more horrifying haha aaaahhh

SO after the fact, I did some quick research on the matter. I discovered that the fly I had fed my girl was a "flesh fly". Flesh flies are viviparous and house their live young in their abdomen, waiting to lay them on dung or on rotting flesh, etc. Lovely.

What I want to know is if anyone else has had this experience, and if anyone knows whether or not these tiny, wretched maggots would have posed any threat to a mantis at all. The quick, frantic research I did pulled up no information on the matter... but it would be nice to know for next time (though I hope there is no 'next time') whether these maggots would make a unwilling host out of my poor girl, or if she can just munch 'em down like little McMaggot fries with no adverse side effects?

...Man, insects are beautiful and I love them... but they are also sometimes the things of nightmares ha hahaha.

 

[aNisip]

Flesh flies do give birth to live young. They compete with many other fly species that feed on carrion and such, so their young to have the best chance of survival and having to wait for eggs to hatch would be wasted time, so live birth it is .

If you catch a flesh fly female, usually they are mated and ready to lay live maggots. Just by gently squeezing the abdomen can you force the live larvae out and effectively 'force' birth.

The flesh fly and their baby maggots are perfectly okay for a mantis to eat. But they crawl alot and can sometimes avoid the mantid's mouth and crawl all over its body. If there happens to be an opening as to where it can enter the mantis, then there might be a problem.

I've easily cultured flesh flies before and never had a problem.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,

Andrew

 

[TheBeesKnees]

Thanks, Andrew!! This pretty well confirms my suspicions that eating them would cause her no problem, but if they found a nice squishy crevace on her body they could set up camp. And thanks for the tip, as well! I'll make sure to give my caught flies a loving squeeze before putting them into her terrarium from now on :] Otherwise, minimal risk of parasitization aside, I just find it kinda messy!

I appreciate the super informative response, Boss! Thanks again

 

[aNisip]

Anytime

But usually a nice squeeze on the abdomen with other flies wont yield anything (eggs and such) , typically only flesh fly females that have young maggots ready to birth will come out of a fly.

 

[SkittishMale]

I remember grabbing a fly in my bathroom and having maggots crawl out of its abdomen and it grossed me out so much.