Wingéd Aphid
This little guy landed on my laptop last night. Look at the size of that stabbing beak! This bug doesn’t just like blood, it likes arterial blood.
Okay, actually that’s just an antenna.
I think.
Oh man. I hope.
A really funny thing happened next: it began fussing around on my laptop and I couldn’t figure out why. So I did what any rational human would do when confronted with a seizure: I grabbed my camera and videotaped it.
My laptop has an anodized aluminum surface. To a human, it’s a satiny finish to the metal. To a gnat, however, it’s covered in cobbles exactly the right size to snag the hooks on your feet!
I’ll post the video if I can get it compressed enough while still being able to see the leg flapping action.
Edit: And now, as promised:
Spent the evening hunting bugs with Steve Jackson in Austin, TX. We had a rockin good time, and got about a dozen postable pix between us.
tceisele said,
May 18, 2008 @ 10:56 am
It’s a little hard to be sure, but it looks to me like a winged aphid. The wings are long and broad, and it looks like there are four of them (most of the things called gnats are flies, and they only have two wings). The body shape and legs look very aphid-like, and I think I can see its bug-style mouthparts folded underneath (the tip of its beak looks like it is sticking out a little bit just behind the front legs). I had thought that aphids only had wings in the fall, but apparently some aphid species have winged forms in the spring, too.
tceisele said,
May 18, 2008 @ 11:04 am
Just watched the video, and yes, it definitely has four wings, and I think I can see the “cornicles” on its abdomen (the two little projections that most aphids have sticking out of the upper rear of the abdomen, but that aren’t present in other insects). It’s interesting that it was getting stuck on the finish of your laptop, maybe you’ve hit on a new way to make aphid traps!
David Brady said,
May 18, 2008 @ 2:51 pm
Cool! I hate it when I get the bug name wrong, though, because now even if I change the title to aphid the deep link will still be 2008/05/18/gnat. Blah.
Maybe I’ll haxxor the database.
[Edit: haxxor haxxor haxxor! Ehh, turns out that you can edit the deep link by changing the post slug, because at some point in the past I was smart enough to configure the blog that way. Yay, go me.
]
Athena said,
May 19, 2008 @ 4:35 pm
heehee … I was listening to swing music while watching that video. MAN, that aphid can dance!
Actually, I kinda thought it looked like it was cleaning it’s antennae at one point…?