Long-tailed dance fly
The long-tailed dance fly is a small fly with a very unusual way of finding a partner. The females gather at dusk and hover together in a dancing cloud to show off. The males bring them presents of food.
How fast is it?
Fun facts
Before the dance, a female swallows air to puff up her belly and wraps her scaly legs around it to look bigger.
Females gather in groups of 10 to 100 and hover about half a metre above the plants.
The males fly in figure-of-8 patterns while hunting for a gift.
Females come back to the same dancing spot every evening, unless it is rainy or very windy.
Most asked questions about Long-tailed dance fly
?Why do male dance flies bring gifts?
The females cannot hunt, so they get all their protein from the insects the males bring.
?When do long-tailed dance flies dance?
From May to July, just before sunset and around dawn.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Rhamphomyia longicauda
- Group
- Flies and mosquitoes
- Family
- Empididae
- Classification
- Insecta > Diptera > Empididae
- Lives on
- North America
Where the facts come from
- Rhamphomyia longicauda (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 Katja Schulz from Washington, D. C., USA. CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.
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