University of Manchester - Maggot maestros pest in show

Maggots are the toast of the art world, thanks to the University of Manchester. Fruit fly larvae were the stars of Pestival - a festival celebrating insects in art, and the art of being an insect - when Matthew Cobb and Cathy McCrohan held workshops in "maggot painting" at London's Southbank Centre. Dr Cobb and Dr McCrohan, both academics at Manchester's faculty of life sciences, used large blowfly maggots to create paintings by dipping them in non-toxic paint and allowing them to crawl over paper. Several thousand maggots were involved in the demonstration, then released unharmed into a compost heap.