Deep in the heart of Los Angeles.

Near  Beverly Hills.

A gooey substance seeps   up from a massive underground reservoir and  traps nearly every living thing that touches it.

In this excavation pit, among the bones of  the dead and gone, one creature thrives:   the petroleum fly.

This maggot is its baby.

Aww.

Feasting on the misfortunes of others.

Animals have been getting stuck  here for tens of thousands of   years.

Including creatures that  are long gone: dire wolves,   mammoths and saber-toothed cats.

These fossils  were all found here, in the La Brea Tar Pits.

While some call this viscous substance tar,   it’s actually natural asphalt.

Mix that with  sand, gravel and rocks, and you’ve got a road.

The pits are treasure troves for paleontologists,   who estimate they hold millions of fossils.

The  petroleum fly larvae squirm among them with ease.

The front part of their body is lipophobic,  meaning it repels oil.

This helps the larvae stay afloat.

They breathe through these  snorkel-like tubes, called spiracles, on their backside.

The spiracles secrete  water to keep oil out.

No clogging here.

Like all growing children, the larvae are  ravenous.

They seek out insects trapped in   the asphalt.

They could search for food on the  water that sometimes collects on the tar pits,   but the asphalt is a far better hunting  ground.

More prey and less competition.

This larva moves in on a dead  cricket.

It pokes its way into the cricket’s exoskeleton and devours  it from the inside out.

As it eats,   the larva also swallows a lot of  asphalt.

See that dark stuff in its guts?

If we ate this way, asphalt would get absorbed  into our bodies and could give us cancer.

But the toxic stuff simply passes through  the larva’s insides, leaving it unscathed.

And on the outside of its body?

The larva  actually needs the asphalt to survive.

Without this protection, it would dry out  and die.

Even larvae like to moisturize.

After bulking up, the larvae transform  into handsome adults about the size of a fruit fly.

Although they have wings, they  spend much of their lives strolling on the   surface of the tar pits.

Scientists aren’t yet  sure how, but the fly’s feet repel the stuff.

If the fly’s wings or any other  body part touches the asphalt,   they’re doomed.

They could even be  eaten by one of their own larvae.

But if they stay on top of things, they’ll spawn  a new generation of sludge-loving survivors.