More on rabbit parasite

Question
Hi again,

A couple more things I noticed about this bizarre parasite: It has what looks like a little sucker head, flat and lighter colored on one end; it's leaving small trails of blood as it crawls around in a can; it was definitely sucking the rabbit's blood, externally, I believe; it's skin is slightly see through and it has tiny black dots all over; it also has sparse, short, black hairs sticking out of it.  It's not a tick; more like a fat caterpillar or huge dark colored maggot.  Any ideas?  Thanks.

Answer
Dear Juliette,

You got it right!  :)  Yes, it's a large, rather disgusting maggot.  A botfly larva encysts under the skin and lives in the host's connective tissue while it develops.  The small black "spots" you see are where the bristles attach.  When the larva moves around in its cyst, the bristles scrape the inner surface, setting up a flow of lymph that the maggot ingests.

At metamorphosis time, the larva drops out of the hole in the top of the cyst (which it has been using as a breathing hole) and turns into a pupa.  This incubates a while, then hatches out into the adult botfly.  Charming!

Hope you weren't eating breakfast while reading this.

Take care,

Dana