Читать книгу The World's Most Dangerous Animals - Kevin Baker Baker - Страница 15

Tsetse fly – American Museum of Natural History, New York, USA. Image author Mr. Tam Nguyen.

The tsetse fly is an insect that can send you into a deep sleep, but unlike Snow White you won't be awoken by a handsome prince.

What is the Tsetse Fly? – The Tsetse fly, sometimes known as the Tik-Tik fly, is a fly which likes to bite. It is widely considered a deadly nuisance in Africa and is known to be extremely dangerous to both humans and animals. What's more is that tsetse flies have been known to lay their pupae in live human beings, under their flesh.Tsetse flies bite animals and humans and feed on their blood.

Tsetse flies are actually considered to be extremely similar to other more docile and calmer flies such as the common housefly. Unfortunately, the similarities generally end in their appearance. The female of this species reproduces, not by laying eggs, but rather by producing live larvae, one at a time. The larvae tend to be laid in cool sheltered areas such as under bushes, large stones or rocks. It then burrows and buries itself almost straight away, and then transforms into a pupa. The actual fly itself can emerge from anything from 22 days, up until 60 days later. When the fly emerges depends largely upon the temperature. The female Tsetse fly will mate just once in her life, and can produce a single larvae every 10 days on average.

Why are tsetse flies so dangerous? The main reason why tsetse flies are considered to be so dangerous, is because they carry a unique sleeping sickness disease known as African trypanosomiasis. This disease perhaps doesn’t sound too serious, and certainly not life threatening, However, this couldn’t be any farther from the truth. When the fly bites its victim, a deadly parasite that it carries, enters the victim’s bloodstream, and attacks the central nervous system. In the early stages of the disease, many victims often suffer extremely high fevers, headaches, joint pain, weakness, fatigue, itching, weight loss, and severe nausea. As the fever progresses, things then get even worse, as the victims will often lose concentration and basic motor skills, and will simply become indifferent to their surroundings.

In a rather cruel twist of irony, victims of the 'sleeping' sickness disease, will actually find it very difficult to go to sleep at night. In its very advanced stages, the disease can cause victims to suffer from severe seizures and to display disturbing maniacal behaviour. The disease finishes its victims off by causing them to fall into spells of excessively deep sleep, before finally slipping into a coma, and than unfortunately death.

This is a very common disease in Africa, and it affects an estimated 300,000 people every single year. Unfortunately, many of these people often die because they aren’t even correctly diagnosed with the disease from the start. Scientists and experts in Africa are however, in the process of developing vaccines and antibodies to help combat the effects of this terrible disease transmitted from tsetse flies, and the early results are looking extremely promising indeed.