An invasion of carnivorous parasites swept over Florida. The blowfly larvae are destroying the endangered deer population and are likely to soon take up livestock. To combat them, the US authorities release millions of sterile males into the wild, whose main task is to cause the degeneration of the blowflies and reduce their numbers to a minimum.
The South Florida authorities have released thousands of sterile flies in order to combat parasitic larvae that devour living tissues of warm-blooded animals, including humans.
A blowfly outbreak has broken out in the United States for the first time in 30 years and has claimed 120 lives of endangered white-tailed deer. Government officials fear that the larval epidemic could spill over into livestock, causing massive damage to agriculture. While reserve managers are hastily erecting pens for animals, the authorities are asking farmers to be extra vigilant.
A state of emergency has been declared in Monroe County. To fight the parasites, government scientists are breeding sterile male blowflies in huge numbers. The strategy is simple: mating with females, they do not leave offspring, and therefore the next generation of flies, instead of producing many times more young, is doomed to extinction. Thus, generation after generation, flies will degenerate until they either disappear from the region completely, or reduce their numbers to an acceptable minimum.
The USDA claims that its services release more than 3 million (!) Sterile flies twice a week. Since October 11, 87 such settlements have already been made at 25 points in Florida. So far, the authorities cannot even roughly calculate how long pest control will take and how much it will cost the state. Many people cite a figure of about 6 months, but this data may be inaccurate.
Those same goofy larvae (Cochliomyia hominivorax). These parasites look quite harmless, but their activities can cause serious damage to both agriculture and human health.
Much to the chagrin of farmers, the goat fly (Cochliomyia hominivorax) larvae feed on the tissues of warm-blooded animals. During the larval stage, they are screwed into the flesh by a corkscrew and begin to devour the host from the inside. As a rule, they enter the body through an open wound - they usually cannot bite through the thick skin of a mammal. The fact that they can infect people is also frightening, since during this invasion of parasites no one has yet gone to the hospital with similar symptoms.
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Meat flies are tropical insects, and their invasion of Florida is primarily due to the increase in temperature due to global warming. However, these flies have lived in the United States before, so a set of additional measures will need to be taken to eradicate them.
