Every schoolboy knows about the most dangerous fly. The fly zc lives on the African continent. And now, for 150 years, the local population and animals have been intimidating. In some areas, people abandon fertile plantations and go to other places. In these lands there is no worse bloodsucker than a fly.
Why is she so guilty if she doesn’t really emit her own poison? The main reason why thousands of people died is the dangerous parasites of trypanosomes that this insect carries.
What does the fly look like?
The usual appearance, almost like that of an ordinary fly, still has its own distinctive features. On the head there is a long proboscis, which allows females to bite through the skin of humans and animals and feed on blood. The wings are translucent, which fold to a flat state when the fly is at rest. The insect has a gray abdomen below, and yellow above it, and four longitudinal dark stripes are located on the red chest. The adult fly tsts, the photo of which is presented above, during its life lays up to 10 larvae, which, when they fall to the ground, burrow and pupate for several hours.
How does infection happen?
The infection process is inevitable if the fly flies at least once ate the blood of carriers of trypanosomiasis (or "sleeping sickness"). According to scientists, wild antelopes and other mammals in whose blood this parasite lives are to blame. Moreover, the animals themselves do not die from this disease. Sleeping sickness does not appear immediately. At first, the patient feels weakness, fatigue, changes occur in the central nervous system. A person is depleted, often faints or falls into a deep fainting dream, condensations appear on his body, meningoencephalitis develops, and death occurs as a result. Moreover, not only the indigenous people die. Dozens of tourists after returning from Africa were infected with sleeping sickness.
For cattle, the fly flies is no less dangerous. Death is caused by an animal disease, Nagan, which is also carried by these bloodthirsty insects. According to sad statistics, 3 million heads of cattle die annually from tsetse fly bites.
Scientists are looking for a way out
The inhabitants of Africa and Australia, where this bloodsucker lives, are waiting for deliverance from danger. But to date, there is no cure for “sleeping sickness, ” no way to destroy the tsetse fly. Trypanosomes behave very aggressively in the human body, they mutate and mutate, so it is impossible to kill all mutations with one medicine. Several parasites will be destroyed, and the rest will continue their life.
Scientists have high hopes for a new way to reduce the tsetse fly population. A fly mates with a male only once in a lifetime. Knowing this feature, scientists decided to release millions of sterilized males into nature. To do this, they are specially grown and irradiated with radiation. The female, having mated once, will not allow another male to come to her, but she will not be able to produce offspring. This method, according to experts, will relieve carriers of a deadly disease. And after about a few years, the fly will disappear from the face of the planet.
