Discusting: Women found being eaten alive by maggots

[mattm04]

WARNING: Disturbing article (no pictures)

The first officer to arrive smelled a strong odor of feces and saw what he thought was a decomposing body lying in a puddle of body fluids on the living room floor next to a bed. The woman was motionless and appeared to be dead, police reports show.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,460915,00.html

I feel sorry for the cop who saw that....

I need a good dose of

[Nyoibo]

The maggots quite possibly helped keep her alive.

[One-Fang]

Maggots don't "eat you alive". Maggots only eat flesh that's already dead.

Pretty gross, anyway.

[Rapscallion]

I believe it's only a specific breed of maggots that eat only dead flesh, if I remember the medical articles about it right.

Rapscallion

[Nyoibo]

No, it's a specific breed that they use for medical purposes, but all maggots only eat dead flesh.

[draggar]

I believe it's only a specific breed of maggots that eat only dead flesh, if I remember the medical articles about it right.

Rapscallion

We one found 3 kittens (<1 day old) and the runt had maggots in his eyes. They ate away his dead flesh and helped save his eyes. I think all maggots only eat dead flesh.

The body was decomposing and in a puddle of bodily fluids but only appeared to be dead??

Edit: I just read the article and she was alive? Now I'm a little creeped out.

[crazylegs]

I believe it's only a specific breed of maggots that eat only dead flesh, if I remember the medical articles about it right.

Rapscallion

Igorina (sp?) is (I think) the best person to ask, doesn't she work with our maggoty friends in the course of her work...?

[hopie144]

Maggots eat healthy flesh, too. They don't know the difference.


http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives...1019.Me.r.html
"Maggots eat flesh, bad flesh, good flesh, red flesh, blue flesh. They do not know when to stop eating, the buffet never closes as far as they are concerned. In order to stop the process of tissue removal, the maggots have to be washed out with a sterile fluid."


http://www.zetatalk3.com/health/theal11c.htm

http://ezinearticles.com/?Feeding-on...ots&id=1358446

[One-Fang]

I can google too, and now I'm confused on the matter. While I don't doubt your own beliefs on it, I wonder what an authoritive source would be? Certainly "ezinearticles" is not it.

Wikipedia: "They eat the dead tissue, leaving the live tissue alone,"

Disgustingly Healthy - "The astonishing thing about medically applied maggots is that they only dissolve unhealthy tissues. The healthy tissues are not decomposed by the enzymes."

Dermentnz - "maggots feed on the dead and infected tissue but do not eat living healthy tissue" Note that this is not clear whether it's all maggots or some maggots. (These guys are the New Zealand Dermatological Society Incorporated, so I would think fairly close to getting authoritive here)

If we go to the source for all internet heresay (snopes), we find in one article that some maggots eat living flesh. There is no source provided, though, and the article is not "do maggots eat living flesh", it's a throwaway comment on a slightly different legend.

Land Care Research NZ tells us some maggots burrow through skin to get to live tissue.

So where are we on the "maggots only eat dead flesh" stance? It seems clear from the best sources I can find online in a 5m google that some maggots certainly do eat live flesh. However, it may be likely that the ones used in medical procedures certainly do only eat the dead flesh. While some eat live flesh, I would think the Dermatological Society would have its facts straight about medical dermatological procedures.

It may also be that some places use maggots that eat live flesh, and stop them when they get there. Other places only use maggots that eat only dead flesh.

In summary then, I retract the above statement. As some maggots eat live flesh and this was not a medical procedure where they were sterilely applied in a hospital, it's entirely possible those maggots were eating her alive.

[Nyoibo]

When I was doing some more research I found some stuff that some maggots do eat living flesh, but there are not many of them.