The Bug Geek

Insects. Doing Science. Other awesome, geeky stuff.

Forgotten Photo Friday: Giant robber fly (Promachus hinei)

8 Comments Posted by on February 10, 2012

This fly…this fly made me lose my mind a little bit when I first saw it.  I have seen robber flies before, but I had never encountered a GIANT robber fly.  It totally lives up to its name:

Giant Robber Fly (Promachus hinei)

Giant Robber Fly (Promachus hinei)

That fly is HUGE. This photo by Katja Shulz may help provide some scale for the beast (that’s me down there).

When you’re a fly, you’re that big, and you’re a mega-bad-ass stealth-ninja fighter-jet predator, you don’t have to do silly things like fly away in a frantic whirr when a human starts mucking around with your blade of grass. You OWN that blade of grass.

Robber fly is the boss of this blade of grass. Photo: Katja Shulz

Also, you have no trouble telling humans that YOU ARE THE BOSS OF THINGS.

Giant robber fly tells Dave Stone, “YOUR CAMERA? I AM THE BOSS OF THAT TOO.”

About these ads
Arthropods, Diptera (True Flies), Insects, Just for fun, Photo Friday

8 Responses to Forgotten Photo Friday: Giant robber fly (Promachus hinei)

  1. Scott Hogsten February 10, 2012 at 10:15 PM

    Great Photo! Those were some awesome Robber Flies at the Shaw Nature Preserve. I missed one of the discussions because I was following one around.

    Reply
  2. Morgan Jackson February 10, 2012 at 10:18 PM

    Killer photo Geek! Love the smooth background!

    Reply
  3. eremophila February 11, 2012 at 2:05 AM

    You didn’t mention the drone they make! Like a B52!

    Reply
    • TGIQ February 11, 2012 at 8:24 AM

      You’re right! They are SUPER loud! (Although I think I did mention something about them being fighter-jet-esque, so maybe that counts a little?) ;)

      Reply
  4. Lucy Corrander February 11, 2012 at 1:18 PM

    It seems to have an athletic build – does it jump as well as fly?

    It was only when I saw the sitting-on-a-camera picture that I really got an idea of its size.

    Reply
    • TGIQ February 13, 2012 at 6:48 AM

      It’s a big critter for sure. I don’t think they “jump” in the traditional sense, but I could see those long legs helping when they take off quickly from their perch to snag the poor prey item flying by…

      Reply

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out / Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. ( Log Out / Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out / Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 622 other followers

%d bloggers like this: