Useful ladybugs are welcomed by farmers for their ability to eat pests. How come doctors found a live ladybug inside the man’s large intestine? This finding surprised the doctor during a routine examination of colonoscopy. How did the experts comment on this?
Insects in the Digestive Tract
The human body hides many organisms, both beneficial and harmful. We know that the human gut can host tapeworms, roaches, roundworms, and other unwelcome parasites. The intestines are a natural environment for parasites. An organism that is not built to survive in such conditions is not expected to survive inside the human body. Therefore, it was very surprising to find a live ladybug in the human gut.
During the routine colonoscopy, the doctor was surprised. On the monitor screen, they saw a ladybug (Harmonia axyridis) inside the patient’s large intestine. How the insect got into the bowels of the digestive tract and survived there is a mystery.
Clean Empty Gut
The most likely doctors consider the possibility that the ladybug entered the man’s stomach during sleep the day before the procedure. Because the large intestine normally contains stool, a thorough emptying is required for a successful colonoscopic examination. Before a colonoscopy, the patient must drink a few liters of cleaning solution, usually the day before.
According to doctors, it was the cleansing cocktail that played a key role in the insect’s way through the digestive tract. An insect intruder would not normally survive gastric passage and gastric hydrochloric acid. According to the doctors, the laxative cocktail accelerated his journey so much that the live ladybug reached the large intestine. It follows that the ladybug has no super abilities. She was just lucky at the right time.
About 6,000 species of ladybugs are described in North America. We expect to see these useful insect predators on plants and crops, not in the human digestive tract. Although this is a very exceptional case, it is not the first one. In the past, doctors found a cockroach, for example, during a colonoscopy.
Source and credit: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6791639/, pixabay.com, unsplash.com
