Each week Simon Barnes hears what the last seven days has been like for a member of the animal kingdom
I happen to think that maternal care – mother-love if you prefer – is the most important thing in the world. Being a loving mother myself, I also take a considerable pride in our greatest achievement. We tsetse flies have created one of greatest wonders on the entire planet.
Monday
A good day. A bloody good day as we tsetses say. I need a blood meal every two or three days if I’m to survive, and a buffalo herd is a banquet. All you have to do is avoid the flicking tails and flailing horns, find a good place and bite. And we can bite deep. Male tsetses sometimes go for humans, but we females need something stronger.
Tuesday
Don’t begrudge me my blood. I’m feeding for two these days. We tsetses aren’t like those flies that swarm around dunghills, lay 100 eggs and promptly forget them. We hatch a single egg and retain the child – I deplore the world grub – inside our bodies. A bit like those mammals who think they’re so superior.
Wednesday
It hurts when we bite. I can’t help that. At least it’s a good, sharp, clean pain: we don’t inject itchy anticoagulant like mosquitoes. I’ve been told our blood-eating spreads diseases in other species. Well: don’t blame the tsetse flies, blame the pathogens. We didn’t put them there.
The Serengeti is there because of us – you can’t keep domestic stock there
Thursday
I’ve been feeding my son on milk, obviously. I produce a nutrient-rich liquid and secrete it from specialised milk glands. I’ve fed the child inside through three stages and now he’s ready to go. So out into the world he goes and buries himself in the earth. He’ll be a pupa already and when the moment is right, he’ll emerge as a grown-up and seek the two most important things in life: blood and a nice blood-nourished female.
Friday
Domestic stock will do. But in the areas we do best, the cattle tend to die on us. Farmers can’t even keep draft animals because we bite them and they die. So it goes. Here we bite, God help us: we can do no other.
Saturday
A feast of wildebeest today. Not as good as buffalo, but pretty damn good. I looked out beyond the herd – it reached the horizon in every direction – and had a moment of deep pride. I mean, this is the Serengeti: perhaps the greatest wonder on the face of the Earth. And it’s there because of us tsetses. You can’t keep any sort of domestic stock here. But the big mammals that have been here for thousands of generations: they’re tough and resilient and can live alongside us – after all, why would we want to kill off our food supply?
Thanks to us, these vast plains have been left wild: and people from all over the world come to see them. We’ve brought riches to this place and we have created a world of wonder. Next time you marvel at the African savannah wildlife, remember to thank us.
*As told to Simon Barnes
Female tsetse CV
Lifespan: up to four months as an adult for a female
Eating habits: blood. From large mammals
Hobbies: biting
Sexual preferences: males with nice overlapping wings
Photograph by Alamy
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