The Red-footed Cannibalfly (Promachus rufipes), a kind of robber fly has just about the coolest (and creepiest) name of any insect. I spotted this female Red-footed Cannibalfly last week at Occoquan Bay National Wildlife Refuge. If you look very closely at the image, you can actually see some of its tiny red feet. However, this insect is not known for being cute—it is a particularly fierce predator that can take down much larger prey, reportedly including hummingbirds.
On a personal basis, I have a particular fondness for the Red-footed Cannibalfly. On 31 August 2013, I did a posting called simply Red-footed Cannibalfly. The posting had some decent photos and and some interesting information and had a modest degree of success, with a total of 44 likes.
Amazingly, though, the posting has been viewed 2530 times to date. Apparently when folks go searching with Google, Bing, or some other search engine, they come across my posting and are intrigued enough to view it. I know that search engine algorithms are closely-guarded secrets, but for this one particular topic, I seem to have broken the code. If you do a search for “red-footed cannibalfly,” you might see my name pop up on the first page of results—it’s a weird claim to fame, but life on the internet is often a mystery.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Mike Powell 
Creepy, good description. Great shot, the subject is absolutely creepy.
I so enjoyed this post, Mike. The clear and detailed photo of the red-footed cannibalfly, your information regarding the cannibalfly, too. Fierce enough to take out a hummingbird, wow, that’s serious. And the algorithm results brought a smile to my face, so of course I googled it and ta-da you came up on the first page. Life in 2019, it’s a curious mix. Many thanks.
Thanks for your wonderful words, Jet. Sometimes I wonder if others will “get” my posts. You and I, however, share a sense of enthusiasm and curiosity that makes it pretty likely that you will respond positively to almost all of the images and text that I post. We also have a similar zeal to explore and to share with others the cool results of those explorations.
I very seriously do not wanna mess with this guy.
Great shot Mike not sure we have anything like this over here.
I’m just glad I’m bigger than he is! 😉
Interestingly I did the search and sure enough a link came up for you but I clicked on it and found it was a compilation of all your posts tagged with red-footed cannibalfly. I imagine this will please you as it gives the searcher access to all your tagged posts for this search-term. I returned to my search results and the actual link provided was: https://michaelqpowell.com › tag › red-footed-cannibalfly
If you do the search in Bing, for example, I think you come with an individual post and not just the compilation. It used to be that way with Google, but something changed this past year and I don’t get as many hits on the original posting.
PS. that was google’s display line – it acts as link in search results but not when pasted as I did above – oops! The working link is: https://michaelqpowell.com/tag/red-footed-cannibalfly/
Thanks, Liz. That’s the same result I get–it seems like Google prefers to aggregate the results based on the tags that I used for a posting.
Weird name. I know I could not have identified it, but I will on the look out for it now!
That is a cool name, Mike. Great photo, too!
Very Nice Mike! That is one interesting insect!