Absurd Creature of the Week: The Fly That Devours Its Mother From the Inside Out

A male strepsiptera mates with a female embedded in a wasp. He’s far more beautiful than her, for she’s a wingless, legless sack of eggs. But it’s what’s inside that counts, and what counts for this insect is…well lots of eggs I guess. Mike Hrabar

Ah, motherhood. I don’t know anything about it, but I heard there’s a lot of, like, sacrifice and stuff. Not only do you have to bring the brat into the world, but then you have to feed it for at least 18 years or you get in big trouble. That’s a lot of pressure.

More absurd creatures:

The Beautiful Undersea Raver That Digests Its Victims Alive

The Ferocious Bug That Sucks Prey Dry and Wears Their Corpses

This Marsupial Has Marathon Sex Until It Goes Blind and Drops Dead

But with all due respect to human mothers out there, their sacrifice is nothing compared to a momma strepsiptera. (Cue phone call from my own mother in 3…2…1…) This little parasite invades the bodies of all manner of insects, where she waits patiently as the young that fill her body consume her from the inside out. Eventually they erupt out of their sacrificial mother and emerge from the still very much alive host insect into the light of day—as many as a million of them in one particularly large species that parasitizes big grasshoppers. Yeah, you can go ahead and throw away that “Mother of the Year” mug now.

The 600 or so species of strepsiptera are some of the cleverest, most brutal parasites on Earth. Unlike a lot of parasites out there, they have no interest in keeping their host alive for very long: They use them, abuse them, and explode out of their bodies, leaving gaping wounds that haven’t the slightest chance of healing. And their life cycle must be one of the strangest and most wonderfully complex among all parasites.