Last night I was at a party at my girlfriend’s house, and we were all sitting in the living room. Some new people come walking through the door, and with them, comes a fucking GIGANTIC, huge, long, terrifying insect, flying in like a dive bomber. Everyone in the living room, terrified, retreats into the adjoining area (not really a seperate room, but cut off by little dividing walls) hastily. The bug looked to be four to five inches long, was a light brown/tan color, and seemed like it had two pairs of wings. At first, it almost looked like it was two bugs stuck together or something.
In the next room, we hypothesized about what it was. Some people suggested it was a small hummingbird, others thought it looked like a praying mantis. “But praying mantises aren’t brown, they’re green,” I said. So we were puzzled. At that point, a large, fratty-looking, alpha male wearing a backwards baseball cap ventured into the next room, took off his cap, caught the bug inside it, and put it outside. (One of the rare occasions I was happy to have a fratty alpha-male at the party - someone has to be brave, or cocky, enough to step forward and take charge.) Some people walked in there and watched him do it, but I was too terrified to look at the bug. They were like, “OH. MY. FUCKING. GOD.” when they saw it.
They thought it was a praying mantis. But praying mantises don’t fly, right? And they’re not brown, right?
What could this fucking scary evil creature have been?
Hm…looking around on that site, I think it looks more like this mantidfly. But even then I’m not sure. I wish I had the guts to go in there and look at the damn thing, but I’m way too much of a coward when it comes to insects. The slow-moving, chilled out kind never bother me, even if they’re huge, but the ones that fly around really fast and are huge will scare the pants off of me.
Since you don’t tell us where you are it’s impossible to even narrow down what we might be dealing with. Based on your description I’d place large sums on either a mantis or a phasmid.
I’m in southern Indiana. The thing I saw looked considerably thicker and heftier than those mantises, but it may well have been one since others seemed to think that it was. (They were all high, and as far as I know none of them were entomologists, so it’s not definite.) Edit: that brown one you linked to looked substantial enough to have been the culprit.
Hehe you guys ever watch that insect show on Discovery HD ? Man those stick insects were HUGE.
Damn those stick insects! They grow up to about 1-2 feet long I believe. Still… nothing beats giant moths, first time I saw one I stayed in my room the rest of the day.
Hmmm. That site claims that dobsonflies eat other insects. That contradicts other sources which claim that they don’t eat, or that they are not believed to eat during their adult stage, or that they might but don’t have to. The dobsonfly is one of those insects that spends most of its life in a larval state, like butterflies and moths. The adult form lives only long enough to mate. The larval state is called a hellgrammite, another candidate for “what the hell is that”, and known for being good fish bait:
Back in college, a brown mantis got into the hall of the dormitory I was living in, and perched on the wall in its distinctive pose. A small crowd of gawkers gathered around to see it — it was a pretty big one, about five or six inches long, and you don’t see bugs that big every day. Finally, someone got a shoebox to try to capture it and set it free; but in the process, he managed to scare it enough so that it took flight, causing about half of the gawkers to disperse, shrieking to various degrees. I remember, though, that when it was flying, it appeared to have “two sets of wings”. You can see a picture of a mantis with its wings extended here.
Alright, the verdict is in, and it was definitely a mantis. It looked exactly like that picture with the wings extended that MikeS linked to. Thanks everyone!
Occasionally? There’s one type of dragonfly that we have around here, the smaller, bluish looking ones that seem to like lakes, that seems to do nothing but mate.
I read once the reason why. I thought it was a Straight Dope article, but I can’t find it in the archive. Anyhoo, the reason is that the male dragonfly has a scoop on his penis that can remove the sperm from previous suitors. Of course, not only he has it, but all the other males do as well, so his strategy is to stay engaged for as long as possible so that no one else scoops his sperm out.
If I might ask… what, specifically, were you afraid of? I’m trying to think of any flying insects in the North American continental area that can deliver a fatal injury, or indeed anything more than a sting. Of course, you may be allergic to bee stings, which certainly makes your caution understandable, but absent something along those lines, I guess I’m having trouble understanding what, specifically, created this terror.
I debated the propriety of asking this in GQ, and decided that it was possible that there would be a pure factual answer, such as allergies, or the new information (for me) that there’s an americanus big-biteieus flying insect that can do serious physical damage. If the answer is more… er… esoteric… then please feel free to ignore or redirect to a more appropriate forum.
Same thing that makes people afraid of a mouse and jump on a chair, shrieking. I’m terrified of any flying bug that’s not a butterfly. Nearly crashed my car on more than one occasion by a moth/beetle/bee in the car with me. I’ll even scream if a skeeter eater gets anywhere near me. And god…don’t get me started on dragonflies.
A fairly common one, I think, but, yeah, I have, as probably does the OP, a visceral fear of sufficiently large insects, despite rationally realizing they can do nothing to me of any significance.
