I first heard about this newly discovered insect on the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast. Curious, I googled for some information and I am not disappointed( Cut for somewhat NSFW material )

Zoologger: Horror fly returns from the dead

"a mythical beast, not seen for more than 160 years. A nocturnal animal that feeds on the rotten flesh of large mammals. A species active only during the winter months that reportedly emits a luminous glow from its large, orange head. What new horror is this?

It's a fly, the bone skipper Thyreophora ( Read more... )

A couple weeks ago I assembled a big two-page article for my site on what I felt were the twenty most unusual and interesting beetles ( Read more... )

Because my last post, in retrospect, seems to me to give the many females of the biological world slightly short shrift, a post that makes clear the fact that in the vast majority of species it's the females that have their menfolk by the short and curlies ( Read more... )

A butterfly species equipped with tiny ears on its wings can distinguish between high and low pitch sounds, possibly as a way to listen in on nearby birds, new research suggests.

- http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33483193/ns/technology_and_science-

Brain-Controlling Flies to Triumph Over Alien Ants?
 May 15, 2009

Source of article A decades-long battle against invasive fire ants in the southern U.S. might be turning a corner, thanks to a nightmarish little fly.

Fire ants are widely hated, because they bite people's feet, kill infant birds, short out electrical units, and outcompete native ant ( Read more... )

Lake Malawi is the third largest lake on earth, and one of the deepest. In it's depth midge larvae hide out, away from predators, until the rains break.

Then they emerge in swarms as adult midges and form clouds of busily mating insects.

This article has some crappy pics of the swarms.The footage from the freshwater episode of Planet Earth is ( Read more... )

Haven't seen a tag for this so I assume it hasn't been posted before. ^^; I hail from a lab that does work with Drosophila melanogaster (also known as the common fruit fly) and it's fascinating to watch their embryos develop before my eyes.

Unlike most animals, fruit flies embryos undergo superficial meroblastic (incomplete) cleavage and become ( Read more... )

I've read wtf_nature almost since it began, but I've never made a new post before.

There's nothing I love more in nature than an animal that goes a completely different route than the rest of its group, and one of my top favorite animal groups, the Diptera, have quite a few surprising deviants. Case in point, the various species whose unusual ( Read more... )

Not much WTF about a bluebottle apart from its incredible beauty and ability to find our cat food plates and lay eggs on it! But I hope this is apporate for this community ( Read more... )