VIDEO: WORMS THAT BELONG IN NIGHTMARES COULD BE FEEDING ON YOUR FLESH!

Are you paranoid about bugs? Ever had a nightmare where insects just come crawling out of your leg? Well, be terrified because this is now a reality – these bugs can literally burrow into your skin, lay eggs IN your skin which will eventually result in worms crawling out of the boil-like bumps....

UM... SORRY, WHAT????

This sounds like something out if a horror story but one that arrived on Lee van Heerden's doorstep after she spotted some weird looking bumps on her dogs. She said: “My rescue dogs are still young enough to need immunisations every few months. I noticed these things, they felt like marbles under their skin. I thought ‘gee, that’s weird’.” While she and the puppies were at the vet to get their regular injections, Van Heerden mentioned the bumps to the vet who had heard about other instances of Mango Flies – a relative of the Bot fly – in Gauteng, South Africa. The doctor squeezed the boil-like sores on the dogs and larvae came out.
“She started squeezing and this little worm, they sort of looked like cutworms you find in the garden, started coming out. They took 12 worms out of one of my dogs, and seven out of the other.”

So you're thinking "poor puppies but at least humans are safe", but here is where you would be wrong! These Mango worms can burrow into human skin too, causing boils on the backs of arms or around the waist, lower back, or buttocks. It all starts when the female Mango fly deposit 100-300 eggs in sandy soil, often contaminated with faeces, which then hatch. The larvae (worms) then find a delicious looking host in the form of an animal or human, penetrate the skin and burrow.

It basically then grows in your body for two weeks, forming a growing purple bump that gradually gets bigger. It may only be a little itchy at first, so most people pass it off as a mosquito bite, but it eventually turns purple and painful, eventually bursting, draining fluids containing blood and waste products from the worm itself.

Feeling sick yet?

You can get infected as easily as leaving your clothes out to dry where Mango Flies can lay their eggs, which is not cool. If your stomach is made of steel, check out this video of people extract these worms... oh... and do not watch this while you are eating!