Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio. Hey
Speaker 1: brain Stuff, Lauren vogel Bomb Here. Chances are that, you,
Speaker 1: like me, have spent the better part of your sentient
Speaker 1: life assuming that maggots are gross and a lot of
Speaker 1: the mare due to their intolerable habit of eating rotting
Speaker 1: flesh and feces. But have you considered that maggots might
Speaker 1: be what saves you all of us in the end.
Speaker 1: Not all maggots are created equal, of course. The one
Speaker 1: that's going to save you is not the flesh eating
Speaker 1: screw worm maggot of the Florida Keys, nor the larva
Speaker 1: that invests Sardinia's infamous and illegal delicacy Kasu marzou, or
Speaker 1: maggot cheese. There's only one maggot currently known to science
Speaker 1: that could possibly save humanity, and that's the larva of
Speaker 1: the black soldier fly. And they're still kind of gross.
Speaker 1: Thousands of them will feast on a single food source
Speaker 1: at once, creating a writhing, living fountain of maggots. But
Speaker 1: sometimes you just have to set aside disgust in the
Speaker 1: interest of survival. It's a writhing, living fountain of beneficent earth.
Speaker 1: Saving Maggots common in much of the Western Hemisphere and Australia.
Speaker 1: You may not have remembered noticing a black soldier fly before.
Speaker 1: The adults are about one inch long around two and
Speaker 1: a half centimeters and can be mistaken for wasps only.
Speaker 1: They're extremely slow and lack a stinger. They often assue
Speaker 1: flight and spend their fourteen days or so of adulthood
Speaker 1: mosying around on the ground. But what black soldier flies
Speaker 1: look like as adults hardly matters, as they spend very
Speaker 1: little time in their grown up bodies. In fact, the
Speaker 1: adults have no mouthparts or digestive organs because once they
Speaker 1: become flies, it's sort of a hidden quiddit situation. They
Speaker 1: can mate within a couple of days of hatching, and
Speaker 1: they don't live more than a week or two after that.
Speaker 1: So it's the larva that have sustainability researchers salivating. Literally,
Speaker 1: if their plans come to fruition, we will all be
Speaker 1: eating black soldier fly larva, which are referred to as
Speaker 1: BSFL in the BIZ. This is because as BSFL contain
Speaker 1: about fort protein in addition to some calcium and amino acids,
Speaker 1: which is astronomical compared to every other plant and animal
Speaker 1: based food on the planet, and they taste like peanuts
Speaker 1: or fritos, depending on who you ask. According to a
Speaker 1: United Nations report, insects already make up parts of the
Speaker 1: diets of around two billion people worldwide, and as Earth's
Speaker 1: human population grows, meat like beef and chicken will be
Speaker 1: a protein option for fewer and fewer people. It only
Speaker 1: takes one acre of BSFL to grow the same amount
Speaker 1: of protein as three thousand acres of cattle or a
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty acres of soybeans. The larva themselves can
Speaker 1: be dried and turned into flour, pressed for their oils,
Speaker 1: or roasted and sprinkled over a salad for a little
Speaker 1: extra crunch. The sky's the limit with these little buddies.
Speaker 1: Not only that bsf l make great trash processors, they're
Speaker 1: capable of eating a wide variety of organic waste, nearly
Speaker 1: anything you can throw at them, from food scraps and
Speaker 1: rotting carcasses to poop and toxic algae, although they reportedly
Speaker 1: have a difficult time managing hair bones and pineapple rindes,
Speaker 1: so farming with them would leave us with a smaller
Speaker 1: carbon footprint and a whole lot of compost a group
Speaker 1: of researchers at Texas A and M has even figured
Speaker 1: out how to put BSFL to sleep for long periods
Speaker 1: of time and then wake them up when it's time
Speaker 1: to put them to work eating waste. A few different
Speaker 1: companies are currently trying to make this BSFL thing happen,
Speaker 1: But can we get over a revulsion in the interest
Speaker 1: of survival Keep your ear to the ground of the
Speaker 1: next few decades we're about to find out. Today's episode
Speaker 1: was written by Jescelin Shields and produced by Tyler Clang.
Speaker 1: Brain Stuff this production of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works.
Speaker 1: For more on this and lots of other futuristically gross topics,
Speaker 1: visit our home planet how stuff Works dot com and more. Podcasts.
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