Boy in news report spotted eating flies

An Aedes Aegypti mosquito is photographed on human skin in a lab of the International Training and Medical Research Training Center (CIDEIM) on January 25, 2016, in Cali, Colombia. CIDEIM sci

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published 13 February 2020

A young boy in Australia became a viral star after eagle-eyed TV viewers spotted him casually eating flies as they landed on his face during a news report. A report by current affairs show The Project included an interview with a rural family about rainfall. As the parents answer questions, their son feels a fly land on his cheek, darts his tongue out like a lizard and eats it. When another fly lands, he repeats the performance.

Car ‘splatometer’ reveals insect numbers decline

It is not only Australian children that insects need to fear: a tragic decline in numbers worldwide has been further confirmed by a study in Kent using a “splatometer”. A grid was placed over number plates of cars in the south-east county in 2019, reports The Guardian, and the number of squashed bugs in each square was counted. Worryingly, the study found 50% fewer insect corpses than an identical test carried out in 2004.