Disgusting Insect Thought To Be Extinct For 170 Years Found In Spain
“The Piophilidae are valuable to police in ageing corpses and time of death, as they do not colonise bodies until three to six months after death. MartÃn-Vega speculates that one of the reasons T. cynophila has evaded entomologists for so long is because collections are not usually made in winter, when the flies are most active. Nor are most entomologists inclined to collect insects from highly decayed corpses.”
–Gross! Cool! The thyreophora cynophilahila, a kind of fly last seen in 1840, has been found in Spain. (By a scientist with a name that combines those of the pioneering synth duo, Suicide!) lately. As reported in New Scientist, Daniel Martin-Vega and his colleagues at the University of Alcalá in Madrid found specimens of the fly in traps they’d set for a forensic entomology study focussing on the colonization of carrion.
The fly, also known as a “bone skipper,” is sarcosaprophagous, “that is, it eats and breeds in marrow from crushed bones of large mammals such as deer,” after they’ve been killed and eaten by larger animals, like wolves and bears. Since there are less of these animals around to crush big bones and expose the delicious marrow inside, the flies have gotten very scarce. But, apparently, not completely extinct. So, good!
Here are Martin Rev and Alan Vega performing the classic “Ghost Rider” in the late ‘70s.