Right now 100 million radiation-blasted
flesh-eating flies are raining down over
00:00
the jungles of Panama – to commit
a genocide that can never end.
00:06
Their tiny bodies are rebuilding a wall of
flesh that protects an entire continent.
00:11
This is one of humanity's most successful
wars, going on for over 50 years now.
00:16
Fought from Central America
to the deserts of Libya.
00:22
Ok, so what's going on?
00:25
The Unbeatable Flesh Eating Fly
00:29
We need to talk about one of the most
terrifying parasites on earth for a moment.
00:31
Don’t worry, we won’t make it too gross.
00:35
If you want to skip this part,
jump to the next chapter.
00:37
Cochliomyia hominivorax – which
literally means "the man eater."
00:41
The New World Screwworm fly,
at home in the Americas.
00:46
Each of these metallic blue-green flies
with bright red eyes that exist in nature
00:50
is here because it feasted on the
flesh of a warm blooded animal.
00:55
Cochliomyia can detect wounds and
smell blood across vast distances.
00:59
If a human, a deer or a squirrel has the tiniest scratch,
female screwworm flies will try to lay eggs in the wound.
01:04
When they hatch the worms start eating
healthy flesh with sharp mandibles.
01:11
Causing horrible wounds,
attracting even more flies.
01:15
In serious cases the animal will die,
or at least be severely weakened.
01:19
Cochliomyia doesn’t add anything positive
to the world and is a natural enemy of ours.
01:24
For most of history, this parasite was
simply a horrifying fact of life in the Americas.
01:29
And then we accidently created
a paradise for them.
01:34
As farmers introduced millions and millions of
cows to the vast expanses of the southern US,
01:38
screwworms became a catastrophic problem and a
source of endless suffering for our defenseless cattle.
01:43
One outbreak might wipe out herds and lead to cruel,
lingering deaths for countless animals in the wild.
01:48
Traditional pesticides were
useless against Cochliomyia
01:55
because you couldn't poison something
that lived inside a living animal's flesh.
01:58
You couldn't prevent animals from getting
injured or flies from finding wounds.
02:02
The situation seemed hopeless
and Cochliomyia was winning.
02:06
Ranchers had to spend countless hours
examining their herds, treating wounds,
02:11
trying to protect newborns, watching
helplessly as their animals suffered.
02:15
And then two scientists in the 1950s had an idea
that was too wild to be taken seriously at first:
02:19
What if we kind of 'nuke' the screwworms?
02:25
Radioactive Parasite Factories
02:29
Screwworm flies have a major weakness – female
Cochliomyia can lay up to 400 eggs, multiple times.
02:33
But they only mate a single time before
they die at the ripe-old age of three weeks.
02:39
So what if we could somehow
disrupt the mating process?
02:45
What if we could flood the
environment with sterile male flies?
02:49
The females would waste their one and only chance at
reproduction on males that couldn't produce offspring.
02:53
An entire species could theoretically
mate itself out of existence.
02:59
But how do you sterilize millions of flies without killing
them or making them too weak to compete for mates?
03:03
Well it turned out the timing to
do this was kind of perfect.
03:09
Scientists studying the effects of radiation had discovered
that specific doses could damage reproductive cells
03:14
while leaving the rest of an organism intact.
03:20
So all we needed to do was to figure out
how high this dose was for Cochliomyia,
03:23
breed millions of flies, irradiate them and
release them over thousands of square kilometers.
03:27
Imagine explaining this idea to someone in 1950.
03:33
Imagine the scale of the damage and the suffering
that Cochliomyia caused for people to say:
03:37
Ok sure, let’s try this, why not?
03:42
To prove this could work, scientists
built a screwworm paradise in Florida
03:45
and shipped millions of flies to
the remote island of Curacao.
03:50
Long trays were filled with ground beef and
horse meat, animal blood, milk and eggs.
03:53
Thousands were bred, irradiated and released
into the wild in regular intervals.
03:59
As the weeks and months passed more and
more of the Cochliomyia on the island
04:04
were infertile and mated with regular ones.
04:08
First slowly and then suddenly they were no more.
04:11
Completely eradicated.
04:15
It was time to think much bigger.
04:17
Over the next few decades a war was declared
04:20
and professional worm factories
established to breed them by the billions.
04:22
A single plant in Texas alone needed 70 tons
of meat and 12,000 gallons of blood
04:26
to breed 150 million flies per week.
04:31
The disgusting mix had to be kept warm because
they had to believe they were inside a living animal.
04:35
This lovely process made the insects smell so bad
that airlines initially refused to transport them.
04:41
Their transport boxes had to be sprayed
with cologne just to get them on planes.
04:47
Bit by bit, in a slow-moving wave of biological
warfare, the program eradicated screwworms.
04:51
First from Florida, then across Texas,
through Mexico, and into Central America.
04:58
Every step required billions of sterile flies,
massive coordination,
05:03
and unwavering dedication
from thousands of workers.
05:07
It was an incredible victory of
humanity over the horrors of nature.
05:11
In 1988, the war suddenly became global and for
the first time ever, screwworms escaped to Africa.
05:16
The stakes were astronomical –
if not stopped immediately,
05:22
flesh-eating Cochliomyia could move down the
Nile Valley, around the North African coast
05:25
and conquer regions where medical care
was scarce or non-existent.
05:30
The potential suffering was incalculable.
05:34
To stop this invasion a herculean
operation was triggered immediately.
05:38
Hundreds of Millions of
sterile flies were flown in.
05:42
Ground teams inspected millions
of animals for wounds.
05:46
Communication campaigns explained to
locals why planes were dropping
05:49
boxes full of millions of flesh
eating American flies.
05:52
But it worked.
05:56
In just four months, the invasion was stopped.
05:56
But Cochliomyia still held a firm grip over the
Amazon rainforest and much of South America.
06:00
An area too large, politically complicated
and expensive to expand the war further.
06:05
So a deal was made with Panama, the
narrowest part of the continent –
06:10
the US and Mexico would pay for
a wall of flesh in the small country.
06:14
It would prevent any screwworms
from reaching the north ever again.
06:19
Today, deep in Panama, a nuclear worm
factory runs 24 hours a day, 7 days a week,
06:23
producing an endless stream of sterile flies.
06:28
The technology has come a long way from
the early days – instead of ground meat
06:32
a brown protein sludge made from
powdered blood, milk and eggs
06:35
is piped into trays stacked in rooms kept at
exactly the same temperature as living tissue.
06:39
Thousands of flies are then carefully
irradiated with precise doses of radiation,
06:45
creating Cochliomyia that act
normal but are dead inside.
06:49
Each week 100 million flies are loaded
into rotating dispersal machines
06:53
to be released mid-flight in a finely tuned
balance of drop rate, speed and altitude.
06:57
The flight paths are separated by precisely 1.6
kilometers in an choreographed aerial ballet,
07:02
creating an invisible wall of sterile flies.
07:08
Surveillance teams cover some of the
most remote and challenging terrain
07:12
to check animals for injuries and monitor
for any sign of screwworm activity.
07:15
Unfortunately right now the wall is failing and
the war against Cochliomyia is far from over.
07:20
Cochliomyia strikes back
07:26
In 2016 Cochliomyia somehow made
their way back to the Florida Keys
07:29
turning the paradise islands into a nightmare.
07:33
Key deer were suddenly walking
around with gaping wounds.
07:36
Millions of sterile flies were
rushed in from Panama,
07:40
creating a front around the outbreak
and beginning the eradication again.
07:43
Within months, the invasion
was at least contained.
07:47
And in late 2023 the wall in Panama failed
and Cochliomyia struck back immediately.
07:50
Like a parasitic firestorm on speed it spread
again all over Panama and Costa Rica.
07:57
Burning through Central America
and even reaching Mexiko.
08:02
The worm factory now produces
sterile worms at maximum capacity,
08:05
it is a real biological emergency
and it's not clear when it will be over.
08:09
One day we might be able to win the war against
this horrible monster, we did so before,
08:14
and other parasites have been eradicated
from much of the world or even entirely.
08:19
So if you find yourself in Central America
and see a low flying plane overhead,
08:24
maybe you are witnessing another day in
one of humanity's most unusual wars –
08:28
a war we can never stop fighting
and can't afford to lose.
08:33
Incredible breakthroughs often start with
ideas that sound incredibly crazy at first.
08:45
Seeing solutions where others see dead ends
isn’t a rare skill only geniuses are born with.
08:51
It’s one you can start building right now, in just minutes
a day, with the help of our friends at Brilliant.
08:57
Brilliant will make you smarter every
day, with thousands of interactive,
09:03
bite-size lessons that transform your
mind into a problem-solving machine.
09:07
On Brilliant, learning feels more
like playing a game.
09:12
You’ll get hands-on with big ideas in everything from
math and science to AI, data analysis, and beyond.
09:16
You’ll not only gain knowledge of key concepts,
you’ll learn to apply them to real-world situations.
09:23
Brilliant is constantly releasing new and updated lessons,
so you’ll never run out of fascinating topics to explore.
09:29
Spending just a few minutes a day, you’ll quickly
become a smarter thinker and problem solver,
09:36
with all the tools you need to make
breakthroughs of your own.
09:41
To start exploring everything Brilliant
has to offer for free for a full 30 days,
09:44
visit Brilliant.org/nutshell or click
on the link in the description.
09:49
You’ll also get 20% off an
annual premium subscription.
09:54
This bird has magical powers.
10:01
Let’s see a demonstration.
10:04
Bring in the latest scientific research!
10:06
Wow, that's a lot of complicated stuff about
the immune system and all its cells.
10:09
How could someone possibly understand all of this?
10:13
Incredible! This overview is delightful and easy
to grasp – but still scientifically accurate.
10:16
Let’s make it a bit more difficult.
10:23
Can she make all of evolution visible at a glance?
10:26
This is brilliant.
10:30
You can clearly see the relationships
between species and how they evolved.
10:31
And look at those illustrations!
10:36
These posters are ready to be shared with the world.
10:38
These very special pieces of kurzgesagt
are now available on our shop
10:41
along with many other sciency products –
10:45
all researched with care and created
with love by the birbs with magical powers.
10:47
Every kurzgesagt product you buy directly funds
another moment we get to spend working on our videos.
10:52
Thank you so much for being a part of
our story and for making this channel possible.
10:59
Lyrics & Translation
[English]
Right now 100 million radiation-blasted
flesh-eating flies are raining down over
the jungles of Panama – to commit
a genocide that can never end.
Their tiny bodies are rebuilding a wall of
flesh that protects an entire continent.
This is one of humanity's most successful
wars, going on for over 50 years now.
Fought from Central America
to the deserts of Libya.
Ok, so what's going on?
The Unbeatable Flesh Eating Fly
We need to talk about one of the most
terrifying parasites on earth for a moment.
Don’t worry, we won’t make it too gross.
If you want to skip this part,
jump to the next chapter.
Cochliomyia hominivorax – which
literally means "the man eater."
The New World Screwworm fly,
at home in the Americas.
Each of these metallic blue-green flies
with bright red eyes that exist in nature
is here because it feasted on the
flesh of a warm blooded animal.
Cochliomyia can detect wounds and
smell blood across vast distances.
If a human, a deer or a squirrel has the tiniest scratch,
female screwworm flies will try to lay eggs in the wound.
When they hatch the worms start eating
healthy flesh with sharp mandibles.
Causing horrible wounds,
attracting even more flies.
In serious cases the animal will die,
or at least be severely weakened.
Cochliomyia doesn’t add anything positive
to the world and is a natural enemy of ours.
For most of history, this parasite was
simply a horrifying fact of life in the Americas.
And then we accidently created
a paradise for them.
As farmers introduced millions and millions of
cows to the vast expanses of the southern US,
screwworms became a catastrophic problem and a
source of endless suffering for our defenseless cattle.
One outbreak might wipe out herds and lead to cruel,
lingering deaths for countless animals in the wild.
Traditional pesticides were
useless against Cochliomyia
because you couldn't poison something
that lived inside a living animal's flesh.
You couldn't prevent animals from getting
injured or flies from finding wounds.
The situation seemed hopeless
and Cochliomyia was winning.
Ranchers had to spend countless hours
examining their herds, treating wounds,
trying to protect newborns, watching
helplessly as their animals suffered.
And then two scientists in the 1950s had an idea
that was too wild to be taken seriously at first:
What if we kind of 'nuke' the screwworms?
Radioactive Parasite Factories
Screwworm flies have a major weakness – female
Cochliomyia can lay up to 400 eggs, multiple times.
But they only mate a single time before
they die at the ripe-old age of three weeks.
So what if we could somehow
disrupt the mating process?
What if we could flood the
environment with sterile male flies?
The females would waste their one and only chance at
reproduction on males that couldn't produce offspring.
An entire species could theoretically
mate itself out of existence.
But how do you sterilize millions of flies without killing
them or making them too weak to compete for mates?
Well it turned out the timing to
do this was kind of perfect.
Scientists studying the effects of radiation had discovered
that specific doses could damage reproductive cells
while leaving the rest of an organism intact.
So all we needed to do was to figure out
how high this dose was for Cochliomyia,
breed millions of flies, irradiate them and
release them over thousands of square kilometers.
Imagine explaining this idea to someone in 1950.
Imagine the scale of the damage and the suffering
that Cochliomyia caused for people to say:
Ok sure, let’s try this, why not?
To prove this could work, scientists
built a screwworm paradise in Florida
and shipped millions of flies to
the remote island of Curacao.
Long trays were filled with ground beef and
horse meat, animal blood, milk and eggs.
Thousands were bred, irradiated and released
into the wild in regular intervals.
As the weeks and months passed more and
more of the Cochliomyia on the island
were infertile and mated with regular ones.
First slowly and then suddenly they were no more.
Completely eradicated.
It was time to think much bigger.
Over the next few decades a war was declared
and professional worm factories
established to breed them by the billions.
A single plant in Texas alone needed 70 tons
of meat and 12,000 gallons of blood
to breed 150 million flies per week.
The disgusting mix had to be kept warm because
they had to believe they were inside a living animal.
This lovely process made the insects smell so bad
that airlines initially refused to transport them.
Their transport boxes had to be sprayed
with cologne just to get them on planes.
Bit by bit, in a slow-moving wave of biological
warfare, the program eradicated screwworms.
First from Florida, then across Texas,
through Mexico, and into Central America.
Every step required billions of sterile flies,
massive coordination,
and unwavering dedication
from thousands of workers.
It was an incredible victory of
humanity over the horrors of nature.
In 1988, the war suddenly became global and for
the first time ever, screwworms escaped to Africa.
The stakes were astronomical –
if not stopped immediately,
flesh-eating Cochliomyia could move down the
Nile Valley, around the North African coast
and conquer regions where medical care
was scarce or non-existent.
The potential suffering was incalculable.
To stop this invasion a herculean
operation was triggered immediately.
Hundreds of Millions of
sterile flies were flown in.
Ground teams inspected millions
of animals for wounds.
Communication campaigns explained to
locals why planes were dropping
boxes full of millions of flesh
eating American flies.
But it worked.
In just four months, the invasion was stopped.
But Cochliomyia still held a firm grip over the
Amazon rainforest and much of South America.
An area too large, politically complicated
and expensive to expand the war further.
So a deal was made with Panama, the
narrowest part of the continent –
the US and Mexico would pay for
a wall of flesh in the small country.
It would prevent any screwworms
from reaching the north ever again.
Today, deep in Panama, a nuclear worm
factory runs 24 hours a day, 7 days a week,
producing an endless stream of sterile flies.
The technology has come a long way from
the early days – instead of ground meat
a brown protein sludge made from
powdered blood, milk and eggs
is piped into trays stacked in rooms kept at
exactly the same temperature as living tissue.
Thousands of flies are then carefully
irradiated with precise doses of radiation,
creating Cochliomyia that act
normal but are dead inside.
Each week 100 million flies are loaded
into rotating dispersal machines
to be released mid-flight in a finely tuned
balance of drop rate, speed and altitude.
The flight paths are separated by precisely 1.6
kilometers in an choreographed aerial ballet,
creating an invisible wall of sterile flies.
Surveillance teams cover some of the
most remote and challenging terrain
to check animals for injuries and monitor
for any sign of screwworm activity.
Unfortunately right now the wall is failing and
the war against Cochliomyia is far from over.
Cochliomyia strikes back
In 2016 Cochliomyia somehow made
their way back to the Florida Keys
turning the paradise islands into a nightmare.
Key deer were suddenly walking
around with gaping wounds.
Millions of sterile flies were
rushed in from Panama,
creating a front around the outbreak
and beginning the eradication again.
Within months, the invasion
was at least contained.
And in late 2023 the wall in Panama failed
and Cochliomyia struck back immediately.
Like a parasitic firestorm on speed it spread
again all over Panama and Costa Rica.
Burning through Central America
and even reaching Mexiko.
The worm factory now produces
sterile worms at maximum capacity,
it is a real biological emergency
and it's not clear when it will be over.
One day we might be able to win the war against
this horrible monster, we did so before,
and other parasites have been eradicated
from much of the world or even entirely.
So if you find yourself in Central America
and see a low flying plane overhead,
maybe you are witnessing another day in
one of humanity's most unusual wars –
a war we can never stop fighting
and can't afford to lose.
Incredible breakthroughs often start with
ideas that sound incredibly crazy at first.
Seeing solutions where others see dead ends
isn’t a rare skill only geniuses are born with.
It’s one you can start building right now, in just minutes
a day, with the help of our friends at Brilliant.
Brilliant will make you smarter every
day, with thousands of interactive,
bite-size lessons that transform your
mind into a problem-solving machine.
On Brilliant, learning feels more
like playing a game.
You’ll get hands-on with big ideas in everything from
math and science to AI, data analysis, and beyond.
You’ll not only gain knowledge of key concepts,
you’ll learn to apply them to real-world situations.
Brilliant is constantly releasing new and updated lessons,
so you’ll never run out of fascinating topics to explore.
Spending just a few minutes a day, you’ll quickly
become a smarter thinker and problem solver,
with all the tools you need to make
breakthroughs of your own.
To start exploring everything Brilliant
has to offer for free for a full 30 days,
visit Brilliant.org/nutshell or click
on the link in the description.
You’ll also get 20% off an
annual premium subscription.
This bird has magical powers.
Let’s see a demonstration.
Bring in the latest scientific research!
Wow, that's a lot of complicated stuff about
the immune system and all its cells.
How could someone possibly understand all of this?
Incredible! This overview is delightful and easy
to grasp – but still scientifically accurate.
Let’s make it a bit more difficult.
Can she make all of evolution visible at a glance?
This is brilliant.
You can clearly see the relationships
between species and how they evolved.
And look at those illustrations!
These posters are ready to be shared with the world.
These very special pieces of kurzgesagt
are now available on our shop
along with many other sciency products –
all researched with care and created
with love by the birbs with magical powers.
Every kurzgesagt product you buy directly funds
another moment we get to spend working on our videos.
Thank you so much for being a part of
our story and for making this channel possible.
Key Vocabulary
Start Practicing
| Vocabulary | Meanings |
|---|---|
|
radiation /ˌreɪdiˈeɪʃən/ B1 |
|
|
flesh-eating /flɛʃ ˈiːtɪŋ/ B1 |
|
|
genocide /ˈdʒɛnəsaɪd/ B2 |
|
|
terrifying /ˈtɛrɪfaɪɪŋ/ B1 |
|
|
parasite /ˈpærəsaɪt/ B2 |
|
|
sterile /ˈstɛrəl/ B2 |
|
|
eradicate /ɪˈrædɪkeɪt/ C1 |
|
|
irradiate /ɪˈreɪdiˌeɪt/ C1 |
|
|
surveillance /sərˈveɪləns/ B2 |
|
|
biological /baɪəˈlɒdʒɪkəl/ B2 |
|
|
catastrophic /ˌkætəˈstrɒfɪk/ B2 |
|
|
mating /ˈmeɪtɪŋ/ B1 |
|
|
infertile /ɪnˈfɜːrtəl/ B2 |
|
|
herculean /hɜːrˈkjuːliən/ C1 |
|
|
coordinate /koʊˈɔːrdɪneɪt/ B2 |
|
|
dedication /ˌdɛdɪˈkeɪʃən/ B2 |
|
|
breakthrough /ˈbreɪkθruː/ B2 |
|
Are there any new words in “” you don’t know yet?
💡 Hint: radiation, flesh-eating… Jump into the app and start learning now!
Key Grammar Structures
Coming Soon!
We're updating this section. Stay tuned!
Related Songs