• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

Flies Can Dig For Corpses 2 Meters Deep And Enter Coffins To Lay Eggs

May 16, 2024 by Deborah Bloomfield

Dying is a cloud that looms over us all, but it’s safe to say that the insects have found its silver lining. Necrophages subsist on the tissues of dead animals, and some of them will even dig down to find their prize.

Advertisement

You might think that a body buried underground would be safe from something flapping about in the air, but not so when it comes to coffin flies. Known to science as Conicera tibialis, the female of this spooky species is among the hardest workers when it comes to tracking down dead dinner.

Advertisement

They can burrow through the soil as deep as 2 meters (6.5 feet) to reach buried corpses and deposit their eggs. Corpses that have been buried for as long as 18 years before being exhumed have shown signs of coffin fly occupation, and their preserved remains have even been found in Roman burials, demonstrating just how precious a habitat the dead body is for these flies.

If a body is left out in the open, there’s a predictable sequence of events that will take it from soft corpse to hardened skeleton, and it all begins with the decomposition ecosystem. There are a few familiar faces in the death squad, and they’ll arrive as if on cue from incredible distances if you pop your clogs out in the open.

“So, flies are the first turn up the scene,” said Senior Curator of Diptera for London’s Natural History Museum Dr Erica McAlister to IFLScience. “On a really good day, with really good wind going in the right direction, a fly can sniff out a dead body from up to seven kilometres [4.3 miles] or so. Also, if you bury them, flies can smell that as well, they can bury down. So, flies are going to be there first as they’re the most sensitive, and [you’ll get] different types of flies.”

Advertisement

McAlister is joining IFLScience with co-author of Metamorphosis Adrian Washbourne to discuss all things forensic entomology at CURIOUS Live, IFLScience’s festival of science (register today if you’d care to join the conversation). As she explained, the process really does begin and end with flies.

“The first ones to turn up will be the blowflies, Calliphoridae, and then you gradually get different types of flies; you might get some house flies, you might get some flesh flies, you’ll get beetles start turning up, some moths will be there, maybe a bug, and then the final bit of the party is some more flies who like the bones and the skin and things like that. So, you have a whole succession of these different insects.”

So depending on your take on death, the decomposition ecosystem can be quite horrible, or quite amazing. I, for one, figure that if I’ve already left the picnic, I might as well become one.

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Brazil’s Bolsonaro slams Supreme Court, calls election a ‘farce’ as supporters rally
  2. French minister Beaune: French fishermen must not pay for UK’s Brexit failure
  3. Without The Ozone Layer, This Is What Our Planet Would Be Like
  4. Brand New Species Of Delightful Sea Creature Discovered Off The British Coast

Source Link: Flies Can Dig For Corpses 2 Meters Deep And Enter Coffins To Lay Eggs

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • If Birds Are Dinosaurs, Why Are None As Big As T. Rexes?
  • Psychologists Demonstrate Illusion That Could Be Screwing Up Our Perception Of Time
  • Why Are So Many Enormous Roman Shoes Being Discovered At Hadrian’s Wall?
  • Scientists Think They’ve Pinpointed Structural Differences In Psychopaths’ Brains
  • We’ve Found Our Third-Ever Interstellar Visitor, Orcas Filmed Kissing (With Tongues) In The Wild, And Much More This Week
  • The “Eyes Of Clavius” Will Be Visible On The Moon Today, Thanks To Clair-Obscur Effect
  • Shockingly High Microplastic Levels Found On Remote Mediterranean Coral Reef Island
  • Interstellar Object, Cheesy Nightmares, And Smooching Orcas
  • World’s Largest Martian Meteorite Up For Auction Could Reach Whopping $2-4 Million
  • Kimalu The Beluga Whale Undergoes Pioneering Surgery And Becomes First Beluga To Survive General Aesthetic
  • The 1986 Soviet Space Mission That’s Never Been Repeated: Mir To Salyut And Back Again
  • Grisly Incident In Yellowstone National Park Shows Just How Dangerous This Vibrant Wilderness Can Be
  • Out Of All Greenhouse Gas Emitters On Earth, One US Organization Takes The Biscuit
  • Overly Ambitious Adder Attempts To Eat Hare 10 Times Its Mass In Gnarly Video
  • How Fast Does A Spacecraft Need To Go To Escape The Solar System?
  • President Trump’s Cuts To USAID Could Result In A “Staggering” 14 Million Avoidable Deaths By 2030
  • Dzo: Hybrids Beasts That Are Perfectly Crafted For Life On Earth’s Highest Mountains
  • “Rarest Event Ever” Had A Half-Life 1 Trillion Times Longer Than The Age Of The Universe – How Did We See It?
  • Meet The Bille, A Self-Righting Tetrahedron That Nobody Was Sure Could Exist
  • Neurogenesis Confirmed: Adult Brains Really Do Make New Hippocampal Neurons
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version