Watch out for the parasite fly

 

  • Looks like a harmless bumblebee, but watch out when out in the woods of Sweden: The moose throat bot fly can spray larvae into your eyes. If you see one hovering in front of you, run away fast. “They could cause serious harm,” writes Thomas Jaenson, Professor in Entomology at Uppsala University in Läkartidningen.
  • Going to Sweden?
    Watch out for the parasite fly! Malin Hallgren from Bjursås outside Falun got sprayed in the eye by a fly hovering in the air close to her face as she was picking lingonberries. The fly sprayed her with a singly jet, that hurt.

  • “Then my daughter looked into my eye and saw something crawl in there.” Turns out the parasite had sprayed 30 larvae into Malin’s eye! The parasite fly’s proper name is älgens nässtyng (moose throat bot fly) and it usually put its larvae into the nostril of a moose, but can at times, as Malin Hallgren witnessed, mistake that nostril for a human eye. This insect was first reported in Finland in 1910 and 1913, and has subsequently become more common in southern Finland. In Sweden it was first reported in 1988, but has since increased its distribution. In 1987, it was reported for the first time in Norway.