A MAN left doctors shocked when they discovered a fully intact fly in his intestines.
The 63-year-old from Missouri had reported no strange symptoms and was simply there to have a routine colonoscopy.
It's a procedure that's used to check for bowel cancer and involves inserting a long, thin, flexible tube with a small camera in the bowel, through the bottom.
Nothing seemed out of the ordinary at first.
Doctors at the University of Missouri School of Medicine worked their way through the man's bowel, removing five small growths called polyps from the lining of his intestine, as detailed in the case report published in the American Journal of Gastroenterology.
But they were stunned when they reached the transverse section of the patient's bowel – a section of the large intestine that runs across the abdomen and where the body absorbs water and salts from material it can't digest.
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Here, doctors made a "mysterious finding" – a fully intact fly.
"The fly was not moving on its on or with manipulation with the scope," they wrote.
The patient was just as befuddled as the medics as to how the insect ended up there.
He told doctors he followed pre-colonoscopy protocol and only consumed clear liquids in the 24 hours before the procedure, in order to clear out his bowel.
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He did recall eating a pizza and lettuce in the evening before his fast – but he had no memory of a fly being in his food.
Missouri doctors wrote: "This case represents a very rare coloscopic finding and mystery on how the intact fly found its way to the transverse colon."
There have been instances in which someone has consumed food contaminated with fly eggs.
In rare cases, the eggs can survive acidic conditions in the gastrointestinal tract and feed on dead tissue or food ingested by the host, in what's called intestinal myiasis, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
"Some infested patients have been asymptomatic; others have had abdominal pain, vomiting, and diarrhoea," it said.
The CDC referred to a case recorded in 1984, where a 12-month-old girl from Washington State was taken to the doctors after her mum saw "moving worms" in her poo.
"Careful questioning about the child's dietary history revealed that she was fed over-ripened bananas, which were kept in a hanging wire basket in the kitchen," the CDC said.
"Flies were frequently observed on and around the fruit."
The girl's parents were advised to cover all fruit kept in the house and wash it before it eating, which cleared up the tot's symptoms.
In other skin-crawling news, doctors horrifyingly pulled out a wriggling worm from a woman's brain after she complained of strange symptoms, including a tummy ache.
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