Eastern dobsonfly
The eastern dobsonfly is a huge insect with big see-through wings dotted with white. The male has enormous curved jaws, half as long as his body, like a pair of pincers. Its babies, called hellgrammites, live underwater in fast, clean streams.
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Fun facts
The male's jaws can be 4 centimetres long, while the female has shorter but very powerful jaws.
The mother lays about a thousand eggs in a pile and covers them with a liquid that dries white. The pile looks a bit like a bird dropping.
Its underwater babies grow slowly for one to three years and shed their skin ten to twelve times.
The babies can breathe both in the water and on land.
Grown-ups fly at night, are drawn to lights and usually live only about a week.
Most asked questions about Eastern dobsonfly
?Can a dobsonfly hurt you?
It can pinch with its strong jaws if you grab it, so it is best just to watch it.
?What is a hellgrammite?
It is the baby of the dobsonfly. It lives under stones in streams and hunts small animals.
?How big is an eastern dobsonfly?
It can be up to 14 centimetres long, with wings up to about 13 centimetres across.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Corydalus cornutus
- Group
- Other insects
- Family
- Corydalidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Megaloptera > Corydalidae
- Lives on
- North America
Where the facts come from
- Corydalus cornutus (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
- Picture by Didier Descouens. CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. The round sticker of this bug is cut from the same picture.
If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.
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