Red-footed Cannibalfly

Here's a Red-footed Cannibalfly. At least I'm pretty sure that's what it is; a few years ago I went through a list of robberflies and couldn't find anything that looked like these guys and lives in New Jersey.

It's hard to see, but I believe the cannibalfly is eating a smaller insect. My best guess would be a honeybee, which would be somewhat appropriate given that another colloquial name for the Red-footed Cannibalfly is the Bee Panther. (Maybe I should have included Bee Panther in my post about New Jersey Leopards. They also have yellow-and-black stripes on the tail; maybe Bee Tiger would have been a better name.)

If you're this guy or a close relative, you get dinner by flying over to (usually) an arthropod, jab it with your proboscis, inject digestive juices into your prey, then suck the fluids out of it. (Maybe it's like an arthropod slurpee.)

Apparently they will sometimes eat smaller cannibalflies, giving legitimacy to the "cannibal" part of their name. They're also big enough and tough enough to prey on predators, like dragonflies and damselflies. (There are a lot of tough arthropods; I suspect that size matters a lot when figuring out who wins when robberflies, dragonflies, mantises, centipedes, and spiders square off.)

August 15, 2020 at Negri Nepote Native Grassland Preserve


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