Uploaded November 2010 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
I was lucky enough to have some nifty rat-tailed maggots colonize a wading pool in my backyard (along with mosquito larvae - the smaller twitchy insects in the water - Edit: be sure to dump standing water in your yard if you find mosquito larvae, since adult mosquitoes can carry diseases. Rest assured, none of the mosquitoes in this video survived to adulthood). For maggots, they're actually rather cute! Like other maggots, they become flies when they grow up - in this case syrphid flies. I've seen the adults in my garden sipping nectar and pretending to be bees; they have yellow and black striped abdomens, and even buzz a bit, but they can neither bite nor sting. Rat-tailed maggots can survive in polluted water, including sewer sludge. The "tail" is actually a snorkel, allowing them to breathe air if the water is poor in oxygen.
I was lucky enough to have some nifty rat-tailed maggots colonize a wading pool in my backyard (along with mosquito larvae - the smaller twitchy insects in the water - Edit: be sure to dump standing water in your yard if you find mosquito larvae, since adult mosquitoes can carry diseases. Rest assured, none of the mosquitoes in this video survived to adulthood). For maggots, they're actually rather cute! Like other maggots, they become flies when they grow up - in this case syrphid flies. I've seen the adults in my garden sipping nectar and pretending to be bees; they have yellow and black striped abdomens, and even buzz a bit, but they can neither bite nor sting. Rat-tailed maggots can survive in polluted water, including sewer sludge. The "tail" is actually a snorkel, allowing them to breathe air if the water is poor in oxygen.
