# Maggots, the ones that turn into flies



## Sleepwriter (Sep 21, 2015)

Working on a story that revolves around maggots and having a little difficulty finding out how much dead flesh a maggot can eat in a day.


Any help would be appreciated.


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## InstituteMan (Sep 21, 2015)

I'm going to guess it depends upon the species. In my experience growing up on a farm with a steady supply of maggots, I can tell you (as you likely already know) that they don't come individually. If you have one, you have a thousand.


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## Crowley K. Jarvis (Sep 21, 2015)

Depends on the area. 

Normally, scavengers reach a body before maggots get to it. We got alot of coyotes and wild dogs who drag everything away. 

And yes, there's never a single maggot. Normally more than 50- 100+, for smaller creatures, even more for humans/larger corpses, depending on the body size...  Even more in some areas of the world with huge amounts of flies. 

But it'll still be days, weeks even. They're not exactly flesh-stripping machines...


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## TJ1985 (Sep 21, 2015)

It's totally unsupported, but I vaguely remember something from a biology book years ago stating that a maggot can eat three times it's body mass per day. The problem is, I have no clue how much a maggot weighs. The good part is that most people probably won't know the difference if you miss the number by a few feet. If the flesh is on the ground, ants will get in on the party too and that will accelerate the rate of... meat leaving.


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## Sleepwriter (Sep 21, 2015)

Appreciate the info and yeah I know if there is one there is way more.  If I could figure out how much one could eat I could then multiply that out for a hundred or a thousand. 

Will have to ponder on this for awhile.   The other scavenger animals will be in play but my focus was aimed at our wiggly little friend.


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## TJ1985 (Sep 21, 2015)

From: http://www.answers.com/Q/How_much_does_a_maggot_eat



> Because maggots are so small in size, they typically do not eat too
> much. In fact, they really do not eat daily. Instead, they eat in
> one sitting and until they get bloated and engorged.



Not a lot of help, but it's good to know they're not coming back for seconds...


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## Sleepwriter (Sep 22, 2015)

TJ1985 said:


> From: http://www.answers.com/Q/How_much_does_a_maggot_eat
> 
> 
> 
> Not a lot of help, but it's good to know they're not coming back for seconds...



Well, that could be an issue for me.   I might have to genetically enhance the little buggers.


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## TJ1985 (Sep 22, 2015)

Chernobyl, Fukushima, those are options if you need 'em. I'm not sure if scientists have studied the effect of nuke screwups on maggots.


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## ppsage (Sep 22, 2015)

6 minute time lapse youtube video ---- maggots eat baby pig ... with clock
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1CD6gNmhr0


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## Sleepwriter (Sep 22, 2015)

ppsage said:


> 6 minute time lapse youtube video ---- maggots eat baby pig ... with clock
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1CD6gNmhr0



That was pretty cool and gives me a pretty good time line.


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## ppsage (Sep 22, 2015)

Believe the actual time is highly weather/climate dependent. I think there's a good discussion of this in the book about the forensic graveyard. [The title should be pretty easy to get googlin. A university, maybe in Kentuckyish? set up a forensic study of human decomposition with willed bodies. Think it's still ongoing.] This fetal pig experiment was controlled by keeping out all except those flies and climate controlled probably. There's a lot of detail here which would make a good spice for fiction, if it's seasoned judiciously and aptly.


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## Blade (Sep 22, 2015)

Sleepwriter said:


> That was pretty cool and gives me a pretty good time line.



The pace really seems to pick up once the maggots reach a serious population. At that level you can hear the buzz of them chomping away.ig2:


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## Sleepwriter (Sep 22, 2015)

Yeah once the population got large enough, they made pretty short work of it.


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## PSFoster (Nov 8, 2015)

the place ppsage was referring to is the body farm at the University of Tennessee.


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## Minu (Nov 9, 2015)

In maggot therapy - used to clean wounds - 5 to 10 maggots are applied per sq. centimeter [https://www.mathsisfun.com/definitions/square-centimeter.html - size]. Generally it says that within 48 to 72 hrs can increase their girth from 1-2 mm to 8 to 10mm. That'd be 0.13mms per every hour or 3.12mms per every 24 hrs give or take a few. 

It's not a lot of flesh. There's a reason why when you find maggot infested food / dead animals it is often by the hundreds to thousands of maggots, not just a few.


Given the increasing cases of people - generally healthy - running around with maggots in their nose & ears, and google it this does happen, either the maggots don't eat a lot of flesh or the people have a severe disconnect somewhere that the wiggling sensation doesn't register. I know dead flesh and all but unless the flesh is dead all throughout the nose / ears they'd feel something.


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