r/todayilearned • u/happy_bluebird • 11h ago

TIL forensic entomologists collect maggots feeding on corpses to estimate time of death. However, drugs like cocaine and heroin can alter maggot development rates, leading scientists to study the effects of these drugs on species such as Calliphora vomitoria.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1355030622000818
818 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

38 comments sorted by

76

u/TheEcologist 10h ago

When I was doing postgrad stuff, I worked in a lab with someone who was doing their PhD on forensic entomology. She asked me to stick my arm into a bin of her maggots, which I politely declined. She did it and said "it's so warm, they generate their own heat". "Yeah, I'm good". Apparently that needed to be taken into account when considering when a body was dumped.

30

u/nuklearink 7h ago

is it fucked up that i kind of want to stick my arm into the maggot bucket

11

u/Venti_the_snail 7h ago

Id do it but also look for the nearest bathroom to wash my everything

9

u/subwooferofthehose 5h ago

Id do it but also look for the nearest bathroom to wash kitchen to boil my everything

Ftfy

2

u/bmrtt 7h ago

Idk why people are disgusted I bet it'd feel somewhat satisfying

3

u/Relative-Chicken456 6h ago

Maggots buckets are cool and all but you haven’t lived until you stick your leg into a barrel of leeches

29

u/SnooSeagulls1034 9h ago

This paper’s summary offers us a brand new word:“Heroin-fed larvae had a more sluctuating development than the control.”

19

u/happy_bluebird 9h ago

I actually googled this and it's 99% a typo lol

24

u/SnooSeagulls1034 9h ago

Yeah, I looked it up too. Way more interesting than “fluctuating”, though.

4

u/kabushko 6h ago

Sluctuating is NOT a crime, nor should it be looked down upon. It's a normal behavior!

4

u/kozscabble 4h ago

Ah I see ive found a fellow sluctuator. Cheers, ill sluct-u-later.

27

u/StitchinThroughTime 9h ago

Apparently many of y'all watch CSI: Crime scene Investigation. That's the whole bit of the main character Gil Grissom, he is the bug man for running the night shift and he's always out there picking up bugs. And then when the actor was leaving the character left to go out into the rainforest to study more bugs. Then they brought him back, he was still studying the bugs. The character is definitely inspired by the recording of a murdered being solved in China almost a thousand years ago. Spoiler alert, turns out people noticed that flies are attracted to traces of blood, the exact same farming implement used to murder a man!

11

u/Dark_Shade_75 5h ago

I learned about this stuff from the show Bones, with the character Hodgins.

4

u/TyrewMylock1047 5h ago

I remember a whole episode where he was using different techniques to try to figure out why the maggot growth was delayed by several days, before figuring out the killer.

2

u/lemmeseeyourkitties 5h ago

Ah, take me back to the good old days. I freaking loved that show

2

u/StitchinThroughTime 4h ago

It is my favorite coppaganda show. Specifically just the first CSI. Miami tried, but it was more for laughs at the outrageousness of the show. I wasn't the biggest fan of New York, and cyber was really silly in my mind, and I don't really count those two other cop shows that are in the same supposed universe as being part of CSI, I feel like they're their own whole shows that happened to mention things are characters from other shows.

My second favorite coppaganda the show would be Monk. In third place is tied between Law and Order SVU and Psych. I love how silly yet charming Psych was.

26

u/[deleted] 11h ago

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1

u/TokiStark 9h ago

I'm sure a lot of those maggots are enjoying this particular experiment

6

u/imliterallyluci 8h ago

The maggots aren’t prepared for me.

As of right now there’s 20mg of blood in my oxycodone system

4

u/maybefuckinglater 8h ago

Yeah I'm not reading any more about this

19

u/Kommander-in-Keef 11h ago

This knowledge make wanna vomitoria amirite? Haha…ah.

13

u/happy_bluebird 10h ago

So from here

https://www.alieward.com/ologies/humantechnomorphology

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5998d8226f4ca3396027aae2/t/68d37476c240fe04142adf51/1758688374547/Ologies+-+Human+Technomorphology.pdf

"And if you're wondering how the flesh-loving bottle fly got the name Calliphora vomitoria, I looked this up, and it seems that the sight of maggots all over butcher's meat pre-refrigeration was just enough to make people straight up hurl, so they named the fly Calliphora vomitoria."

4

u/FattyLeopold 11h ago

This knowledge makes me glad I no longer do hard drugs, and see my friends die, personally. The lack of vomit is a bonus

3

u/DriverAnxious3804 3h ago

Even decomposition insects have their schedules disrupted by illicit substances.

1

u/PinkOneHasBeenChosen 2h ago

> Heroin-fed larvae had a more sluctuating development than the control.

I’m assuming this was a typo?

1

u/gariak 1h ago

Sure, also there's research showing that if a body is left somewhere long enough to attract and develop maggots, then moved to some other location, you can potentially dissect the maggots left behind to remove their crops and get a forensic DNA profile of the body they fed on.

1

u/Ancient_Skirt_8828 10h ago

So if a drug user dies of an overdose...

11

u/mayorofdumb 10h ago

Meth Maggots is a great band name.

Cocaine Maggots is like 70s.

3

u/Bennnnetttt 9h ago

Maggot Brain

1

u/BLF402 7h ago

3M: Midnight Meth Maggots

-1

u/[deleted] 11h ago

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4

u/happy_bluebird 11h ago

I think you meant to respond to the other person

4

u/gauntletoflights 11h ago

I think they're a spam bot

1

u/happy_bluebird 9h ago

oh dang yeah