When I went outside to do my chores, I discovered this insect on the screen that encloses my porch. It's quite large, about 3 inches long, and when I poked at it (gently) it raised the front part of its body away from the screen and threatened me with those pincer things.

The body part is brown and the wings look almost a camo pattern .. if it were on a tree instead of the screen I doubt I would have seen it. Anyone ever seen anything like it? Have any idea what it is? In all my 50+ years, the last 26 of which have been spent in this area, I've never seen anything like it!





[edit on 12-6-2010 by hhott]

dobsonfly I think...

the larvae stage are called hellagrammites, and are can't miss smallmouth Bass bait

Oops....a little slow in my reply.

It's called a Dobsonfly. This is a female - I think. If you search Google you'll see that the males have MUCH larger pinchers. They're perfectly harmless but are pretty frightening to look at.

[edit on 12-6-2010 by Makuahine]

Thank you all for your replies. I wonder why I've never seen one before? It does look rather menacing and creepy. Like a giant termite with wings, sort of.

The wiki entry says the female can draw blood with those pincers .. I'm glad I didn't try to mess with it.

It is also apparently aquatic, which is odd. The closest significant water source to me is the Cimarron River, and that is 3 or 4 miles away.

I flagged this thread because that is a cool insect! 3 inches long? My girlfriend would sheite her pants if she saw that lol. Thank to all who responded for a little education on a species unknown to me.

I had one of these crawling around on my potato plants the other day. I wondered what it was, now I know.

If you think the females are wild looking you should see a male. Now they look mencing.







I caught several as a kid. They freaked my mother out


Raist

I've not seen one in "real-life" before, but I've seen them, and their larvae in fly-tying books. I've never seen any where I live, so have never tried to tie one.

[edit on 12-6-2010 by stars15k]

Originally posted by JacKatMtn
dobsonfly I think...

the larvae stage are called hellagrammites, and are can't miss smallmouth Bass bait

Good work.

You were quick on the draw with this one.

Amazing what knowledge sits at the finger tips here at ATS.

They are the best bait for Bass though.

For the fishermen in here you can actually catch them in fast moving streams, they like to hang out where there is a good flow of water "rapids" get a good net and shake some rocks and you are sure to get a few in your net.

They do not have wings when in the water and actually look more like a centipede until they mature and go on land to get their wings.

I swear by them for bait. Caught some monster bass with these

-Kdial1

Thanks for posting the photo of this insect -- what a convenient coincidence! I spotted one of these sitting on the wall of my house just two days ago and was wondering what it was as I have never seen anything like if before. Perhaps there is a population explosion of them this summer or some expansion of their typical habitat that we should both spot one for the first time in the 25 years we've been in our respective residences.

I live in the Lake Erie area. Did you see yours in this general region?

I saw one of these last year while taking out the garbage at work & it scared the crap out of me. I immediately came inside & checked bugguide's website & it is a dobsonfly. Those big pincher things on their heads are scary as heck if you've never seen one, though!

I used to see velvet ants around quite a bit as well.

My kids and I were walking around our neighborhood and saw one of these running down the street. I had never seen one before and was so curious as to what it was! We played with it for a bit before letting it on its way. When I say play, I mean I took off my flip flop and used it for it to crawl on. I'm really glad my instincts about brightly colored things being dangerous kicked in because from what I read when we got home, they have one nasty and painful sting! Very cool, though.

Bugs creep me out when they're in my home but I can deal with them when they're outside. I live in the southeast US and we get giant palmetto bugs that fly around the house. Talk about getting freaked out...they are my least favorite thing to find crawling in the house (aside from big spiders).