Have you ever seen a fly fly simultaneously carrying an ant?
During the many hiking/photography trips that I took in my local hills and mountains, starting from as early as six years ago, I have seen a good lot of intriguing scenes of peculiar insect behaviors but only a very few of them linger particularly vividly in my memory. The logic seems like this: what is to be expected might sometimes still be interesting but never to the point of being unforgettably fascinating. I have, for example, observed many times the curious scenes of spider wasps carrying spider victims. It was interesting each time. But even before the first time I seized the opportunity of seeing such a predator vs. prey scene, I had already read from books and therefore always expected such behavioral displays of spider wasps. So later happenings strictly following the script gave me no real surprises as the expectation itself acted paradoxically as a spoiler that spoiled the grander joy of an unexpected discovery. But have you read/known that a tiny fly with a body length of barely 3mm could even fly simultaneously carrying a killed ant? As for me, I myself had totally no such preknowledge and this is probably why it simply astonished and fascinated me seeing it happen before my very own eyes! On that particular morning, by pure accident while passing a scrubland, I spotted a tiny metalic-green fly (around 3mm in body length) with a pair of robust-looking antennae, standing motionless like a zombie, on the leaf of Ampelopsis cantoniensis, accompanied bizarrely by an obviously dead ant lying on the back under its hind-legs. The fly was immediately recognized as a soldier fly because I had previously spotted and identified with the help from a dipterist the individuals of apparently the same species. But what's the story behind the scene? Did the soldier fly kill the ant? Or they're both dead somehow, perhaps by some mysterious kind of external force? I was sunken deep in a bewilderment. And the fly kept the same motionless position until finally the overwhelming curiosity drove me to touch and check the aliveness of this itsybitsy creature by a handpicked fallen leaf. The fly flew instantly and almost equally instantly landed on a nearby leaf of Millettia dielsiana. Voila! The flight covered a distance of only about 20 centimeters but the most amazing part was it actually landed with the ant! So have you ever seen a fly fly simultaneously carrying an ant? As for me, yes! And it was so amazing!
Nature is so full of wonders! Stay curious and beware that knowledge may turn out to be a killjoy!
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