Tse Tse Fly

This large blood sucking fly is the primary carrier of African Sleeping Sickness. They can kill up to a quarter of a million people every year. Fossilized tsetse have been recovered from the Florissant Fossil Beds in Colorado. When at rest, tsetse fold their wings completely one on top of the other. There are 22 different species of tsetse fly, and they live only in Africa. Tsetse flies produce their young in a different manner than most flies. The female lays a single egg but keeps it inside her and It hatches into a maggot inside her body. Then it grows larger and larger as the female feeds on the blood of mammals. When the maggot fills its mother's abdomen, she releases it into the soil. It burrows and pupates immediately. The word ‘tsetse’ comes from Tswana, a language of Southern Africa, and in that language, the word means fly. Tsetse flies have been on this earth for 34 million years.