We received a blunt series of questions (accompanied by a blurry photograph) about what appears to be a black soldier fly larva. The reader asked – in all capital letters – what the creature was and what “caused” it. The reader was also wondering if the creature is harmful and how she can get rid of it. Again, the picture that came along with the question, which is the only information we were given about the creature, is about as unclear as the philosophy, such as it is, of Adorno. However, it nevertheless appears to depict a black soldier fly larva, and since we have no additional information (like the location and size of the creature) to gauge this hypothesis, we’ll operate on the assumption that reader did in fact find black soldier fly larvae. The rather frantic tone of our reader’s email, implied by its capital letters and staccato style of questioning, led us to assume our reader is worried above all else that black soldier fly larvae are harmful, so we will address this concern first, and then address her other questions thereafter.

But before any questions are answered, here is the picture our reader sent in:

Even when you reduce the size of the photo, as we have done, it’s not very clear, but again, it looks like a black soldier fly larva to us. It has similar body dimensions (although we can’t be sure of its size), and the point on the end of its body is one mark of a black soldier fly larva. The creature pictured above also appears to be black, and this body color is not inconsistent with it being a black soldier fly larva (although we should note that these larvae can also be brown or tan).

Assuming it is a black soldier fly larva (BSFL from now on), is it harmful? No. BSFL are innocuous creatures that are often used as animal feed (reptiles, for instance, are fond of them) or in some composting operations. As further confirmation that the larvae aren’t harmful, we invite our reader to search for images of BSFL, which will bring up a number of pictures of people holding dozens of them in their hands. Of course, BSFL, being larvae, eventually grow into adults, but the adults aren’t harmful either. They are also less annoying than house flies, which they compete with, limiting the number of house flies around. Black soldier flies hardly fly around, and they don’t object to being touched, so they can easily be removed from a house.

Even though they aren’t harmful, our reader still might be inclined to get rid of them, but this is a somewhat difficult issue to address because we have no idea where our reader found them. We’ll have to assume inside (because normally people only want to get rid of creatures in their homes and not eliminate them from the wider world), and in which case the reader should take rather generic steps to remove the BSFL. She should make sure that there is not an alluring habitat (like a compost bin or something similar that occurs in nature, like a pile of decomposing leaves) for the BSFL right by her house, and she should also take steps to seal any large openings in her house (e.g., cracks at the bottom of doors). The reader should also be vigilant about removing both black soldier flies and the larval form from her home, as this could help break their life cycle, preventing another round of creatures from being born in the house.

We must now conclude with a complicated conditional statement: If our reader did in fact find a black solider fly larva, it is not harmful, and if the black soldier fly larva (if that’s what it is) was found in her house, she should take the steps listed above to address the issue. Hopefully that answers our reader’s, and if she wants to learn more about the creatures she (might have) found, she should check out our overview of black soldier fly larvae. (The careful reader might notice we didn’t address the matter of what “caused” the black soldier fly larvae, but that’s only because this is a heavy, complicated matter, best left to qualified metaphysicians.)