Spain hit by plague of blood-sucking black flies
Pastor Dale Morgan
Spain hit by plague of blood-sucking black flies*
Dale Fuchs in Madrid
Monday June 25, 2007
The Guardian
A plague of black flies has prompted authorities in north-eastern Spain
to issue warnings on TV and fliers advising people to cover up and avoid
riverside areas in the early morning and dusk.
The insect has been quickly breeding - and sucking blood - along the
rivers and reservoirs of Catalonia and Aragon, causing alarm in small towns.
Only two to three millimetres long, the fly is much smaller and harder
to spot than most mosquitoes, but its voracious bite sent more than
2,000 people to hospital last year in Catalonia alone. Its vigorous jaw,
which releases a cocktail of chemicals, can produce allergic reactions.
"If the mosquito is a neurosurgeon that bites with a probe, the black
fly is a butcher that scratches the skin and makes you bleed," Raul
Escosa, member of an Ebro river environmental board, told El Pais.
"We had to take my 18-year-old daughter to the dermatologist and the
allergist because she had a dozen swellings of eight to 10 centimetres,"
said Jesus Llop, a town council member in the town of Mequinenza.
The black fly, an umbrella term for several Simulium species, was first
detected in the region in 1997, and it has been making its annoying
presence increasingly felt. Unlike the mosquito, it breeds in clean
river water. Regional experts believe the current outbreak stems from
improvements in water quality and new irrigation channels, which created
a new habitat.
The insect injects an anaesthetic, an anti-clotting agent and a
vasodilator into the skin of its host, who belatedly notices the damage
after the fly has moved on. In Switzerland an attacking swarm reportedly
killed a calf.