Study on the development of maggots on meat

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Studying the behavior of maggots on a decaying body can assist in determining the victim's time of death in Forensic Entomology. In this experiment, different parts of chicken meat were placed in an experiment box in different settings. These experiment boxes were modified into fly traps to prevent interference from other creatures like rats, cats or dogs. Experiment box contains the legs’ part, neck part, muscle part, wing part and liver. The plastic bucket is used for the setting of the different parts of meat pieces in a plate box which has holes and a space to hold the meat pieces. The meat placed on the Plastic box holder counter begins to be decomposed by microorganisms and attracts flies as a rich food source. By hanging this Experiment Box near the outside garbage of the house for a week, flies were able to access them and lay eggs. The eggs on the meat hatch into larvae. This experiment was conducted in different steps. Firstly, fresh meat was exposed to collect the eggs which were reared and used to study the development of maggots. Calculating the age of different life stages of maggots, hourly developmental data is presented i.e.- eggs hatched in 16 hours while all the three instars of larvae took 92 hrs. followed by the pupal stage which was 14 days. Surprisingly, the results were amazing observing the different developmental stages of maggots after hours, as the meat in the experiment box produced maggots in a few days and shows the different time duration for development stages of maggots and adult flies.