New World screwworm fly
The New World screwworm fly is a kind of blowfly from the warm parts of America. It is a big problem for farm animals, because its maggots eat living animals instead of dead things. People have worked for many years to keep it away.
How fast is it?
Fun facts
Its maggots are called screwworms because they dig deeper into a wound, a bit like a screw being turned.
It was the first insect people fought with a clever trick: they let out lots of males that could not have babies, so fewer flies were born.
A female mates only once in her life, which is why that trick worked so well.
A female can fly up to 200 kilometres in her life and lay up to 3,000 eggs.
Its whole life, from egg to grown-up fly, takes only about 20 days.
Most asked questions about New World screwworm fly
?Where does the screwworm fly live?
In the warm parts of South and Central America and the Caribbean. It came back to Mexico in 2024 and Texas in 2026.
?How do people stop screwworm flies?
They release lots of male flies that cannot have babies, so the females lay eggs that never hatch.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Cochliomyia hominivorax
- Group
- Flies and mosquitoes
- Family
- Calliphoridae
- Classification
- Insecta > Diptera > Calliphoridae
- Lives on
- South America, North America
- Also known as
- New World screwworm, Screwworm
Where the facts come from
- Cochliomyia hominivorax (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
- Picture by John Kucharski. Public domain, Wikimedia Commons. The round sticker of this bug is cut from the same picture.
If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.
Housefly
Lovebug
Tsetse fly
Common fruit fly
Asian tiger mosquito
Yellow fever mosquito
Giant golden orb-weaver
Glasswing butterfly
Giant honey bee
White witch
Red palm weevil
Atlas beetle