Last week, I was helping an employee measure leaves for a project she’s doing for her master’s degree when she came across this awesome robber fly:

Robber fly on bid leaf magnolia

Watching robber flies always feels kinda like watching one of those nature documentaries to me, the kind where a cheetah is chasing a gazelle.  You feel sorry for the gazelle when the cheetah gets it, but you are also secretly just a little happy to see the cheetah take it down.  Robber flies are the cheetahs in this scenario and the little midge it’s got is the gazelle.  You can’t help but root for the robber fly a bit, even though it’s sitting there sucking out the brains of another insect.

Isn’t nature gloriously gruesome sometimes?

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