Crane Fly (By PiccoloNamek – English wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link)
The Crane Fly, also known as, Daddy Long Legs, Skeeter Eater, Mosquito Hawk, Giant Mosquito, or, as my wife likes to call them, “I don’t care if you kill it, but just get that thing out of the house!”
I can’t think of a more misunderstood bug than the simple Crane fly.
Crane Fly Baby Boom
Have you noticed that these little critters seem to have taken over the world this spring?
The wet weather we’ve been having lately has provided the perfect breeding ground for Crane flies and other bugs.
But no worries, unlike their nasty little lookalikes, Crane flies won’t suck your blood or spread disease.
Crane Flies Are Not Mosquitoes!
No matter what my mother seems to think Crane flies are not mosquitoes.
Some adult Crane flies have adapted to drink water, nectar, and even honey, but most rarely eat.
“There has yet to be found a predatory adult crane fly,” said Matthew Bertone, PhD, a crane fly specialist and extension associate with the North Carolina State University Department of Entomology. “They just don’t have the mouth parts for it. So no, none are blood-feeding, and none of them attack people.”
Crane Flies Aren’t Really Skeeter Eaters
Despite the colloquial name “Skeeter Eater”, and what many of us thought when we were kids, Crane flies do not eat mosquitoes.
They just fly around your house, bank into the occasional wall, or light fixture, and die in about a day, so will somebody tell my wife that I don’t need to hunt these things? I guess that I should just repair that torn screen.