Missing-tourist-survives-on-flies

[wayno]

http://www.stuff.co.nz/travel/travel-tr ... s-on-flies

A German tourist missing for almost three weeks in the Queensland outback has survived the ordeal by eating flies

[walkabout]

Yuuuuukkk!

[GPSGuided]

Fried or marinated?

[Giddy_up]

I prefer mine shashlik style, with lemon myrtle dressing.........

[wayno]

it says he ate insects... i wonder if he ate a variety of insects and the article dwelt on the flies for the sensationalist angle....

[Strider]

An all too familiar story

[GPSGuided]

Nutty tasting grubs for 2 weeks and lots of them.

[wayno]

An all too familiar story

eating flies or the journos distorting events?

[Strider]

Subsistence living for the thrill of it.

[wayno]

well with all the survival schools springing up, who knows when people are deliberately living off the land or not..
in nz there are survival schools that encourage people to do a bear grylls and go and live off the land with little more than a knife and the clothes on their back

[Jag]

Stupid.

[GPSGuided]

Stupid.

Define "stupid".

[wayno]

[Jaala]

I like mine medium rare!

[Area54]

well with all the survival schools springing up, who knows when people are deliberately living off the land or not..
in nz there are survival schools that encourage people to do a bear grylls and go and live off the land with little more than a knife and the clothes on their back

Lots of sandflies to eat...

[David M]

I think too many people think they can survive in the bush as easiy as Bear Grylls does.

In any case, how many flies would you have to eat per day to survive long term? Of course, if it's not cold and you have water healthy people could probably last around three weeks without food anyway so the flies may not have been necessary.

[GPSGuided]

...healthy people could probably last around three weeks without food anyway so the flies may not have been necessary.

You better not tell that German tourist. ROTFL

[north-north-west]

Well, if they were the sort of flies that generally bite people, it sounds like a little poetic justice.

[zac150]

I remember meeting a group at valentines hut who were doing the aawt, basically they had run out of food and only had the staples left, staples being rice! When we met them they had caught bogong moths and were adding these to the rice.

[GPSGuided]

I remember meeting a group at valentines hut who were doing the aawt, basically they had run out of food and only had the staples left, staples being rice! When we met them they had caught bogong moths and were adding these to the rice.

Bogongs are supposedly highly nutritious in protein and other nutrients. Fat and juicy! Can't quite say the same with flies.

Found these two links though. Guess there are some protein in there.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ar ... 010300004X
http://www.examiner.com/article/nutriti ... omestica-l

[zac150]

GPS - I am sure they are full of protein but apparently full of chemicals as well; from what I understand where they breed is heavily farmed and the chemicals in the ground can be found in the moth. I should add you would have to eat a lot to get sick.

The part of the story I didn't mention was that they only had to get to kiandra for another food drop; not sure I would eat an unknown when rice would have got me through the 4 days to kiandra .

[GPSGuided]

The part of the story I didn't mention was that they only had to get to kiandra for another food drop; not sure I would eat an unknown when rice would have got me through the 4 days to kiandra .

True. 4 days on cooked rice isn't bad at all. Wild rabbit or a trout would go down very well with it.

[SteveJ]

GPS - I am sure they are full of protein but apparently full of chemicals as well; from what I understand where they breed is heavily farmed and the chemicals in the ground can be found in the moth. I should add you would have to eat a lot to get sick.
.

Yes, Bogongs contain residual levels of Strychnine and are part of a tragic cycle that has led to the endangerment of the mountain pygmy possums in the Brindabella’s. The Strychnine is residual in the ground from spraying in the 1950’s in western Queensland where the bogongs spend their larval stage feeding on roots (which uptake the Strychnine) before flying south for summer bearing their toxic legacy. The moths are eaten by the Mountain Pygmy possums in great numbers which is seriously impacting their survival. What happened over 60 years ago , 2000 km’s from the Alps is still impacting today, it is all connected ☹