As I was getting ready to leave my local marshland park on Friday, I spotted what I thought was a small dragonfly. Upon closer examination, it turned out to be a robber fly, subduing a captured prey.
There are a lot of varieties of robber flies in the Asilidae family and I am not sure which kind this is, but robber flies have a reputation for being really vicious predators.
Wikipedia describes their hunting method in these words, “The fly attacks its prey by stabbing it with its short, strong proboscis injecting the victim with saliva containing neurotoxic and proteolytic enzymes which very rapidly paralyze the victim and soon digest the insides; the fly then sucks the liquefied material through the proboscis.”
I guess we can all be thankful that robber flies are not big enough to hunt humans—except perhaps in science fiction movies.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Mike Powell 
Nice get; great photo.
Awesome shot. Thanks for the education, too. Yes, I’m so glad they do not hunt “humans!” 🙂
Thanks. Most of the time I have to learn about my subjects after I have photographed them–I tend to photograph almost anything that I see that I find interesting and often have trouble with identifications.
Well, whatever you do, an excellent job. Love everything you bring us! 🙂
You certainly captured it at a vicious moment – great job.
Thanks, Dan. There was certainly a lot of luck involved in getting this shot. I definitely was not stalking the robber fly.
Ugly dude! I bet those guys would hurt if they latched onto you. Those are some amazing eyes — nice sharp photo for showing the details of his ugly puss.
Ugly, but effective–that pretty much sums up the robber fly.
Now thats a cool fly! Excellent shot too..:-)
Thank, Ed. I too find the fly to be cool, though I realize that some others may find it to be creepy.
This sounds like the hyena of the insect world, cleaning up the weak and sick so only the strongest survive.
Great macro shot, Mike! Isn’t it amazing how much we learn when we want to find out what it is we’ve photographed! 🙂
It’s the motto of the US Wild West, “Shoot first and ask questions later.”
Haha, guess that makes me a cowgirl 😉