Corpse-Eating Bone-Skipper Flies No Longer Extinct

What was once thought to be a myth is now an eerie reality that could be flying near you.

They're known as the bone-skipper fly (Thyreophora cynophila),--an insect species that was first discovered in Mannheim, Germany in 1978 according to NBC News. Though they had thought to have been extinct for the last 160 years, they were spotted again in Spain in 2010.

What makes these creatures so loathsome is that instead of feeding off garbage, they would much rather cling to a large, dead body that's in its advanced stages of decay. And unlike most flies, these guys are active throughout the winter months, from November to January, and even hang out after dark.

For the first time, according to Pierfilippo Cerretti, a researcher at the Sapienza University of Rome, the actual specimens of the flies have been discovered. He and colleagues are determining a "neotype" for one bone-skipper species to compare all the other future specie's spottings.

The flies' "previous taxonomy was almost completely incorrect -a mess," Cerretti said, according to LiveScience. "If you have no good specimens, you have no good taxonomy."

The new species of the insect was first talked about with researchers back in 1830, in which they stated that it was "based solely on his memory of specimens he had observed in large numbers destroying preparations of human muscles, ligaments and bones in the Paris School of Medicine in August 1821," according to a study detailing Cerretti's findings published in the June journal ZooKeys.

These guys get part of their name from the things they like to feed off of, and the "skipper" reference is also common in many flies that jump up or down food things that they feed off of.  

These findings might not mean much for you, depending on where you're living, but if you ever head out to Rome, make sure you bring a fly swatter with you, just in case.