| Popis: |
Almost contemporaneous with the rinderpest panzootic another calamity to ravage Africa was that caused by the tsetse fly Glossina, a blood-sucking dipterous insect feeding principally upon large mammals, but also small mammals, birds, and reptiles. At first it was thought to inject a poison or an infectious agent and it was not until 1895, more than 50 years after the first records of the fly were made known, that Bruce in Zululand identified the cause of the illness the fly produced in cattle. The fly is an intermediate host and vector of the flagellate protozoan trypanosomes, some of which are fatal to man and domestic animals. The saliva of the fly contains a powerful blood anti-coagulant which is injected into the host by means of the serrated proboscis when it feeds, transferring trypanosomes at the same time. Inhabiting over 10 million km2 in 38 African countries from wooded savannahs to forests, riverine, and lacustrine vegetation, between the Sahara and Kalahari deserts, the tsetse fly has conferred both a blessing and a curse upon the continent. |
