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« Last post by fohat.digs on Sun, 07 June 2026, 16:34:43 »
"When the eggs hatch, the larvae grow really quickly. They complete early development, or embryogenesis, in about six to seven hours, and then the larvae start eating, and they go through three stages.
By the third stage, they’re quite big maggots, about two-thirds of an inch long. And they really burrow into the flesh. They’re difficult to get out. They have little hooks on them, so they’re called the screwworm because that’s what people see.
The detection of the flesh-eating screwworm comes after DOGE cut a monitoring program for the parasite in Central America, where it has been detected in recent years. According to the trade publication Agri-Pulse, the screwworm monitoring program in Central America was among the cuts DOGE made to animal disease monitoring programs funded by the now-shuttered United States Agency for International Development in foreign countries."
- Emily Singer