Bug card No. 1156 of 1,500
Reindeer warble fly
Hypoderma tarandi
The reindeer warble fly is a fly from the cold far north. Its babies grow up in a very unusual home: under the skin of reindeer and caribou. Reindeer herders do not like it, because it harms their animals' fur and meat.
Lives in
The Arctic, wherever reindeer and caribou live
What does it eat?
Its maggots live under the skin of reindeer and caribou and feed there until they are ready to grow into flies.
How fast is it?
A person walking about 5 km/h (3.1 mph)
Reindeer warble fly about 8 km/h (5 mph)
A kid running fast about 13 km/h (8.1 mph)
A grown-up on a bike about 25 km/h (16 mph)
cool stuff
Fun facts
1
For the Nunamiut people of Alaska, the maggots were a traditional food.
2
People who tried one said it tastes like milk.
3
Very old art from the Ice Age in Europe shows that people ate these maggots long, long ago.
you asked
Most asked questions about Reindeer warble fly
?Where does the reindeer warble fly live?
In the cold Arctic lands where reindeer and caribou live.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Hypoderma tarandi
- Group
- Flies and mosquitoes
- Family
- Oestridae
- Classification
- Insecta > Diptera > Oestridae
- Lives on
- Europe, Asia, North America
- Also known as
- Reindeer botfly
Where the facts come from
- Hypoderma tarandi (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
- Picture by This file is from the Mechanical Curator collection , a set of over 1 million images scanned from out-of-copyright books and released to Flickr Commons by the B. Public domain, Wikimedia Commons. The round sticker of this bug is cut from the same picture.
If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.
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