Southern Living: Love Bugs
I saw a couple of insects joined like this on the hood of my car when I was stopped at a Florida gas station off I-95. I thought nothing of it, nor did I connect this with the hard-to-wash-off smashed bug residue on my windshield. I turns our I was there in time for the semi-annual Love Bug season.
The urban legend runs like this: The University of Florida was trying to develop an insect to deal with the mosquito problem. In something that sounds tailor-made as an argument against things like Monsanto seeds and nanotech, the developing bugs escaped. Supposedly they only live 24 hours, long enough to do nothing but mate and die.
The truth is a little more prosaic. The insects are native to Central America and probably stowed away on a container ship. The really weird thing is to see them "flying United" - they fly superglued together, with the smaller male (who dies when mating) stuck on the side of the female until she lays her eggs and dies.
And they swarm. Remembering that the squashed love bugs are hell on car finishes, eating through the paint, check out a couple of photos of them on cars:
One day's worth of Love Bugs on my son's car. Aannnd...
A Love-Bug-spattered truck we saw.
In a word, eww.