December 16, 2021 47*See, for example, What a Fish Knows
(Scientific American/Farrar, Straus
and Giroux, 2016); reviewed in these
pages by Elizabeth Kolbert, June 23,
2016.of the American Museum of Natural
History.
As a tropical biologist myself, I was
astonished at Voss’s benign attitude to-
ward his parasite. I’ve never had a bot,
but I was once parasitized by an un-
known organism that migrated under
my skin for weeks. Starting at my left
elbow, it crossed my chest and belly,
finally getting as far as my right knee.
It left large lumps in its wake that were
soft at first but eventually hardened.
My medico, perhaps lacking Dr. X’s
expertise, never suggested excising a
lump. When I asked what they were,
he looked puzzled and proclaimed that
they were a sign of a man who had spent
too much time in New Guinea.Is it more acceptable to suck blood
than consume flesh? Mosquitoes are
simply specialized, bloodsucking flies.
According to one estimate they collect
1.6 million gallons of American blood
per year. But they take only a small
amount from each victim—so small,
in fact, that it would require between
200,000 and two million bites to exsan-
guinate an adult human. Sometimes
characterized as the most dangerous
creatures on earth, mosquitoes trans-
mit a variety of diseases, including ma-
laria, which makes us loathe them. But
they also have their mysteries. They fly
at a mere three miles per hour, making
them relatively easy to swat, and they
produce an annoying whine that alerts
victims to their presence—a siren that
must cost a lot of mosquito lives. So
why haven’t they evolved to be silent?
It turns out that it’s mostly females that
whine, and the noise is generated in
order to attract males. But only females
suck blood, which they need in order to
lay eggs, so the buzzing both makes
breeding possible and endangers the
future mother and her offspring.
The tribes of bloodsucking flies are
numerous, and some make the stealthy
mosquito, which administers anesthetic
and anticoagulant saliva to its victims
with surgically precise cutting mouth-
parts, seem positively civilized. The
tiny biting midges, otherwise known
as sand flies, punkies, and no- see- ums,
are in some places so numerous and
impossible to avoid that they can drive
one to the brink of madness. They at-
tack in multitudes, crawl into the small-
est openings left in protective clothing,
and leave large, itchy welts that can
bleed profusely and cause irritation for
weeks. Stable flies, blackflies, horse-
flies, and March flies are much larger,
and when they bite they can inflict real
pain. Thankfully, some, more used to
biting deer or cattle, are not used to
being swatted and are easy to crush
against the skin before they strike.
Robber flies are, according to Bal-
combe, the Rolls- Royce of flies. Huge,
burly, and equipped with a venomous
sting, they are the ones that occasion-
ally catch and kill hummingbirds.
None—including the gigantic Satanas
gigas, or great Satan fly (what a won-
derful inversion, naming a fly after the
devil!)—are particularly aggressive to-
ward humans. One entomologist who
is fascinated by robber flies told Bal-
combe, “The only way I can get them
to bite me is to hold them between my
fingers and press them against my skin,
and even that doesn’t always work.” He
added that the bite is “not very painful,
nothing like a wasp sting.” Such is the
enthusiasm of some entomologists forthese majestic insects that they have
successfully lobbied for a World Robber
Fly Day, observed annually on April 30.
One of the many valuable services
that flies carry out is waste removal. A
dead animal seething with maggots is
a revolting sight, but there’s no denying
that the maggots are doing their bit to
help keep the world clean. In fact, some
maggots are so good at consuming dead
flesh and outcompeting or killing deadly
bacteria that they are used by doctors
to treat wounds. Dr. Ronald A. Sher-
man, an expert in the use of maggots in
medicine, says that 40 to 70 percent of
patients whose wounds have failed to re-
spond to all conventional care and who
were scheduled for amputation respond
so positively to maggot therapy that they
either heal and avoid amputation or re-
quire much less aggressive surgery.
Over a lifetime, Balcombe claims,
the average American produces 25,000
pounds of poop, a volume that would see
the world awash with feces were it not
for the fact that flies and other organ-
isms consume it. It takes a certain type
of person to study poop- eating flies,
and they are not always popular among
their colleagues. One of their most vital
pieces of equipment is the poop- baited
flytrap. A possibly costive researcher
was using such traps in the tropics
(where the traps are quickly cleared)
when, lacking bait, he was forced to take
desperate measures. He tracked some
colleagues (who were doubtless study-
ing birds or some other such delightful
creatures) into the bush each morning,
and when the coast was clear he dug up
their poop to use in his traps. The ploy
worked well enough for a few days, but
when his colleagues discovered what he
was up to, their indignation almost led
to a fistfight, with one exclaiming, “If
you want my shit, you can ask for it.”There are, I’m relieved to report, a
large number of flies that abjure feces
and dead bodies, and instead pollinate
flowers. We often imagine that bees
are the greatest pollinators, but in the
beautiful, flower- filled Alpine valleys
of Europe, two thirds of the pollinators
are flies. In the Arctic, hoverflies and
houseflies carry out 95 percent of the
pollinations. Without pollinating flies,
we wouldn’t have tropical plants like
cacao and jackfruit, or as many gerani-
ums, violets, or irises.
Some pollinating flies are such mar-
velous bee mimics that they have ap-
peared in advertising. The label of one
brand of honey features a pink flower
on which sits a fly rather than a bee.
(Presumably the manufacturers were
unaware of their mistake.) An article
in a major newspaper lamenting the
decline of bees showed an image of a
drone fly, prompting one entomologist
to quip that “bees are getting so scarce
that the newspaper couldn’t find a
photo of one.” Conversely, a printing of
William Golding’s classic novel Lord of
the Flies features a cover picture of an
insect that is not a fly.
As forensic science advances, flies are
becoming the detective’s best friend.
In the US, around fifty species of flies
feed off dead humans, and they follow
a strict schedule that assists patholo-
gists in determining the time of death.
The blowflies arrive first—often within
minutes—while the last comers are the
so- called cheese skippers, which arrive
when the corpse is little more than a
dried- out husk. The cheese skippers,incidentally, are vital to the produc-
tion of one of the world’s most unusual
cheeses: Sardinian casu marzu is a type
of pecorino deliberately infested with
maggots that digest the cheese’s fats (a
process thought to enhance its flavor)
and that are eaten, preferably alive,
along with the cheese.
I would be surprised to discover that
any creature has suffered more in the
pursuit of human knowledge than the
fly. For decades the fruit fly has been
the creature of choice for studies of
genetics. Drosophila researchers have
won seven Nobel Prizes, and entire
journals are dedicated to the publica-
tion of results from fruit fly studies.
Around 100,000 strains of fruit flies
have been created in the lab, many of
which carry genetic defects that allow
us to better understand diseases. The
Ken and Barbie mutants lack external
genitalia, Tin Man lacks a heart, and
Cheap Date loves alcohol. Drop Dead,
Sponge Cake, Swiss Cheese, and Egg
Roll fruit flies all carry hereditary dis-
eases that manifest in patterns of brain
degeneration similar to those seen in
humans. And fruit fly studies are be-
coming ever more sophisticated and
focused on the nexus between nature
and nurture. Marla Sokolowski of the
University of Toronto is examining fly
behavior that might shed light on the
causes of autism, and she’s also study-
ing flies that suffer chronic defeat at the
wings of their rivals, in the hopes that
their experience might inform studies
of depression in humans.
The final chapter in Balcombe’s sur-
prising book, titled “Caring About
Flies,” examines ethics as they pertain
to relationships with these creatures.The philosopher Jeffrey Lockwood’s
paper “Why Is It (at Least a Small)
Wrong to Harm a Fly?” resonates with
Balcombe: Lockwood’s answer is that
flies can feel pain. Some laboratory-
bred fruit flies are born without anuses.
I was surprised at the empathetic re-
sponse of a supervising entomologist
when shown one such unfortunate
creature: “You’ll have to kill it, it’s in
excruciating pain.” Balcombe, whose
earlier books also explored the inner
lives of animals,* can empathize with
the agony of a fly that is unable to shit.
He thinks that flies are rather like us
in that their tiny brains seem capable
of experiencing states akin to not only
pain but sexual frustration, joy, and
perhaps many other feelings and emo-
tions familiar to humans.
What a wonderful book Super Fly is!
Well written and full of fascinating facts,
it urges us to appreciate one of nature’s
least favored groups. Even if you can’t
empathize with flies, Super Fly suggests
good reasons for not reaching automat-
ically for the swatter or bug spray at
the first sign of buzzing. Without flies,
crimes would go unsolved, flowers un-
pollinated, and garbage unremoved. In-
deed, flies are clearly so vital to life on
earth that a world without flies would
quickly experience ecological collapse.
Perhaps we are due for another remake
of The Fly, with Balcombe as an ad-
viser, that reveals more holistically thehuman- fly relationship. (^) Q
HEADED INTO
THE ABYSS
THE STORY OF OUR TIME,
AND THE FUTURE
WE’LL FACE
Brian T. Watson
Brian T. Watson is an architect
and cultural critic. For eighteen
years, he was a columnist with the
Salem News in Salem, Massachusetts,
focused primarily on current affairs
and the forces that were and are
shaping societies both here and abroad.
[email protected]
(781) 367-2008
Paper, $13.00
e-Book, $9.99
Available on Amazon
Independent of the pandemic, we are beset by
a range of unprecedented developments that
together, in this century, threaten the very
existence of civilization. The current states
of just ten forces — capitalism, technology,
the internet, politics, media, education,
human nature, the environment, population,
and transportation — are driving society in
predominantly negative ways.
These forces are powerful and interconnected
and their combined dynamics will carry us
into any number of disasters well before 2100.
We have the knowledge and solutions to address
our difficulties, but for many reasons we will
not employ them.
There is urgency to this story. We face many
threats, but one of them — the internet and
its hegemony and imperatives — is rapidly
changing nearly everything about our world,
including our very capacity to recognize how
profound and dangerous the changes are.
Headed Into the Abyss is comprehensive. It
presents a satisfyingly round story of our
time. It crosses disciplines, connects dots, and
analyzes how each force — in synergies with
other forces — is shaping society. Individually,
we tend to see and address things in parts,
but the forces shaping our lives exist now in
ecologies that defy piecemeal solutions.
Uniquely, Watson brings human nature and
trauma into his assessment of the future. People
have limitations, and these are playing a large
role even now.
What it all adds up to — the big picture — is a
sobering conclusion.
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