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Post details: Mummy-Long-Legs?

Mummy-Long-Legs?

By Ruth D'Alessandro, The Wildlife Gardener

The Wildlife Gardener found this crane fly in the kitchen today. The brilliant red colour caught my attention:

Just what are those things stuck to its back? Is it carrying a clutch of its own eggs? Or, more sinisterly, has something parasitic laid its eggs on the living crane fly?

[More:]

Is it really a Mummy-Long-Legs or will it soon just be mummified?

Update:
Thanks to the power of Naturenet, one of our readers has suggested that the crane fly has mites, which leads me to this website as corroboration.

Also to a rhyme which has bizarrely popped into my head from an ancient SMP Maths book from the 1970s:

Big fleas have little fleas
Upon their backs to bite 'em
And little fleas have littler fleas
And so on, ad infinitum

2 comments so far, see them and add yours here!

Posted on 2nd September 2008 at 9 52 am
by The Virtual Ranger
200 views

Categories: Notes from a Wildlife Garden

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Comments:

Comment from: Richard Comont · http://www.ceh.ac.uk/sci_programmes/PathogensandButterflyPopulations.html

It looks as though it's covered in mites - they look very similar to the mites that infest Lepidoptera, sometimes in huge 'blobs' as here - if they drop off, you'll just about be able to see the tiny legs, but only with a hand lens!

Permalink 02/09/08 @ 21:20

Comment from: The Wildlife Gardener [Admin]

Yes - good idea, Richard. Unfortunately the crane fly has now disappeared so I don't have the dubious pleasure of tweaking one of the red things off to see if it has legs!

Permalink 02/09/08 @ 23:06

The thoughts and writings of The Virtual Ranger, since 1995 the host and mascot of Naturenet, the UK's most popular independent environmental website; along with interjections from his real-life alter ego, Matthew Chatfield, and others. Featuring not only Naturenet and countryside related stuff, but, as on Naturenet, plenty of other material - more or less at random - that takes The Ranger's fancy. But you can be confident that soon enough he'll be rather sarcastic.

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