It’s true. When Fidelis talks about these fly larvae that look like a cross between a tadpole and puffed rice, his animated gestures and impassioned voice command attention. He explains that although these maggots with long breathing tubes that look like tails are common around the world, scientific knowledge of them is limited. Most medical doctors and veterinarians are not familiar with RTMs, even though they can cause illness in humans and animals, alike.

(PHOTO: Fidelis in the lab)

Fidelis first encountered these elusive creatures in 1996. At the time, he was a professor at the University of Dschang in his home country of Cameroon. Local people knew all too well about RTMs and the stomach pain and other ailments they could cause, but his colleagues in the entomology department said they had never seen them before. 

He asked a surgeon friend what he thought about these larvae, which have bodies roughly one to two centimeters long with “tails” of the same length or longer, impacting human health.

“He thought they were too big to be a parasite for humans,” Fidelis says.

This gap between scientific knowledge and local folk wisdom compelled him to keep searching for answers, and he eventually met a traditional healer who regularly treated patients for intestinal infestation, or myiasis. The healer invited Fidelis and the surgeon to witness a treatment. Young children sick with digestive upset came to the healer for help, and he gave them a remedy to induce vomiting. In this, Fidelis and the surgeon saw the rat-tailed maggots expelled from the bodies of the children, who recovered from their illness soon after.

In the French zone, where raffia palms are common, RTMs are well-known because the rotting bark of this species makes an excellent habitat for these larvae. When Fidelis learned this, he worked with local people to collect RTMs from the palms. He was able to preserve many samples and also grew some adult flies from the larvae, which he also preserved.

(PHOTO: A sample of Fidelis's RTMs from Cameroon)

“I had the fly and the maggots, but no eggs,” he says.

As time went on, Fidelis collected anecdotal evidence of RTMs from all around the world but found that scientific research was still lacking. It became clear that the best way to bridge the gap between local wisdom and scientific knowledge was to collect many samples of all phases of the RTM life cycle so that entomologists could thoroughly study the characteristics of the species and help others to finally recognize the tiny decomposers and pseudo-parasites that have been here all along.  

They were beginning to think they would never actually find RTMs, when on June 21, they decided to return to the garbage transfer station where they had previously found regular tail-less maggots writhing in the shallow puddles of leakage from compacted trash. It was a sunny day after a spell of rain, and they thought maybe, just maybe, with more of that foul water sitting around, they’d have a better chance of finding their prized maggots.

The three of them were crouching over a muddy puddle beside a dumpster, wearing the fluorescent yellow vests they’d been advised to wear for safety, when, after stirring up the water a bit with a stick, the long sought-after RTMs wriggled up to the surface.

(PHOTO: The team's first sighting of RTMs in Appalachia)

“We were shouting, ‘We found the maggots! We found the maggots!’,” Hannah says. “The people dropping off their trash that day must have thought we were crazy,” she laughs.