Why The US Drops Millions of Flesh Eating Worms On Central America Every Day

A battle against the worst animal you’ve never heard of

Grant Piper
5 min readAug 16, 2024
(By John Kucharski — Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons. Original uploader was Ellmistfrom http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/graphics/photos/k7576-1.htmImage Number K7576–1, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2071284)

The New World Screwworm (NWS) is so terrifying that its Latin name, Cochliomyia hominivorax, literally means man eater. But despite its fearsome reputation, few people today know about or remember the scourge that these flies were in rural areas stretching from Florida to California and southward to the Panama Canal.

The NWS is known for laying thousands of tiny eggs, between 200 and 500 per clutch, in open wounds on mammals. When these eggs hatch, they disgorge hundreds of tiny worms, which then dig into the exposed flesh. The infection is incredibly painful. Any attempts to remove the worms often result in them digging (or screwing, hence the name) deeper into the flesh. As you can imagine, having hundreds of tiny worms feasting on your flesh is painful, and if left untreated, the results can be deadly.

Screwworms are so dangerous because one infestation can breed hundreds of flies, which go on to lay thousands of eggs in surrounding animals. Screwworms are not picky about their hosts. They will tear into the flesh of cattle, squirrels, deer, dogs, and even humans, infecting them. Cattle were long the favored host for these worms, and they feasted on the large populations…

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Grant Piper

Professional writer. Amateur historian. Husband, father, Christian.