Black Horse Fly: male on plants and female biting

danielj

May 12th, 2007 at 12:00 am

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Male Black Horsefly Sucking Blood?
Hello again,
It may please you to know that my 2 1/2-year-old son is finding both bugs (of which he went through a little terrified period just a couple weeks ago after a black ant pinched him kind of hard) and photography fascinating all of a sudden, since we’ve been spending a good bit of time browsing WTB looking for critters we’re turning up as spring springs here in our part of the world. With bugs he’s still not ready to touch them much, and when taking pictures he finds it easiest to aim the camera either straight down at something or to set it on a surface aimed at what he wants to capture, but it’s a good start on both fronts. Anyway, I was perusing pages looking for what I believe to be a rove beetle (but over an inch long), and we came across a post about a male black horse fly stating that only the females, which look noticeably different, suck blood. I thought critter in the attached pics was a black horse fly, but according to the description it must be a male so I’m wondering if anyone can explain the other attached pic? This was on my lower back, and of the six pics I took trying to get it’s mouthparts and the four other holes it punched in me (some of which you can just barely see around the little fella’s head) before it got this good one, only this image turned out at all clear. I let him eat as long as I could stand it, but I couldn’t wait for him to get his fill before I had to brush him away. This was also in Jacksonville, NC. Any thoughts? Peace,
Peace


Male Black Horse Fly	Female Black Horse vFly

Hi again Peace,
You have correctly identified the male Blach Horse Fly, Tabanus atratus, on the plant, but if you look closely at the individual that is biting, you will see that there is a space between the eyes, indicating the she is a female. You must be quite limber to have gotten that photo of the feasting on your lower back. We expect to be seeing photos from your budding photographer in the future.

Ah! Thank you. I had fixated on this bit from an entry on The Big Black Horse Fly – “Females have smaller eyes *as well as having a white hairy thorax*” – rather than the entry on the Black Horse Fly. Thank you for clearing it up! We’ll definitely share anything DS captures that might be of use to WTB. I’m really looking forward to seeing what his eye is drawn to and how his personal photographic style develops. He sort of helped capture our possible rove beetle, but I can’t by any means credit him with having taken those pics, ‘though I will be sending one or two along for confirmation (if y’all have the chance to do so) once I get them uploaded, trimmed, and sized. As always, many thanks for your effort and dedication to this very good thing you’ve created. Take good care. :-> Peace,
Peace
PS I don’t know if I’m limber, or if the pain of the bite just distracted me from the pain of the stretch! I try to be generous with all the little critters in my immediate world so long as they’re not infesting homes or endangering lives, but dang, if these critters want to suck blood, they’ve gotta find a way to do it less painfully (and then maybe they can teach those skills to tax lawmakers.