FORENSICSMeet the Maggot: How This Flesh-Loving, Butt-Breathing Marvel Helps Us Solve Murders
Not all superheroes wear capes – some live in rubbish bins, garbage dumps and on dead bodies. Maggots, the humble little legless larvae, are actually nature’s antibacterial soldiers. Their ability to survive and thrive in decomposing matter is making them our new secret weapon in forensic entomology – the science of using insects to solve crimes.
Not all superheroes wear capes – some live in rubbish bins, garbage dumps and on dead bodies. Maggots are the offspring of the blowfly, the scourge of the Aussie picnic, nuisance of summer and feared by farmers for infesting and killing sheep.
However, these humble little legless larvae are actually nature’s antibacterial soldiers. Their ability to survive and thrive in decomposing matter is making them our new secret weapon in forensic entomology – the science of using insects to solve crimes – and for cleaning chronic wounds.
But their success in this field depends on us seeing past the “yuck” factor and appreciating what these unique organisms can do for us. So what do maggots actually do, and why do we need them?
Yes, They Live in Filth
Maggots hatch from eggs laid by female blowflies on moist, microbe-rich matter. This might be a corpse, a wound, food waste or anything else palatable or decomposing.
After hatching, the maggots spread enzymes and bacteria that break down their food source into a delectable soup. They drink this soup, heads down and bottoms up, with their cleverly designed bottoms adapted for breathing. This means non-stop voracious feeding in this high nutrient, bacterially rich soup can continue uninterrupted – there’s no need to come up for air.
Their efficiency in recycling decomposing matter so rapidly and effectively makes them a fantastic waste disposal system, but their love of flesh is multi-faceted.
Let’s start with the negative. Attracted to all things decomposing, from rubbish to human remains, they live in filth. Bacterially infected environments are their happy place.
Unfortunately, this can extend to live animals, with wounds becoming infected by maggots, which is known as myiasis. The Australian sheep blowfly (Lucilia cuprina), for example, is responsible for flystrike on our sheep following the soiling of fleece with rain and body fluids.
It can result in significant discomfort and ultimately death for the animals. This costs Australian agriculture approximately A$173 million per year .
But There’s a Flipside
On the flipside, in forensic entomology we use the rapid attraction of female flies to lay eggs on human remains as a “biological clock”.
Flies are our detectives – moments after a person’s death decomposition begins, the odors produced from the remains quickly attract the flies. We determine the age of insects on remains to estimate the time since death.
