Lurking in the sunlit glades of woods and along the mountain trails and country roads, the robber-flies carry on their devastations; or in the open fields where the wild flowers make their appeal to the bees and butterflies, they chase and kill. They are very active creatures and live at the expense of other insects. They grasp them with their strong legs and claws, and then diving their beaks firmly into the bodies of their victims, they suck the blood with great voracity. Robber-flies belong to one of the largest families of the great order Diptera or two-winged flies. Many of them are of large size, the largest measuring nearly two inches in length. They are usually hairy, and some of the species are quite robust, resembling the bumblebees in form and color; others are elongate with slender bodies.
Viewed from the front, the robber's head is broad, the compound eyes are prominent, and the remainder of the face is hairy and bearded. The proboscis or beak is stout and strong, and is formed for piercing and sucking. Strong in flight, the two wings are long and narrow, while the legs, which are spiny and furnished with stout claws on their toes, are used in grasping their plunder as well as a support for their body when at rest. These predatory insects rest on the ground, or upon the foliage of plants growing in open sunny spots. Here they lie in wait for their prey, and when a victim in the shape of some other insect appears, they take to the air with a loud, buzzing sound, catching it on the wing. The unlucky insect, once seized in the powerful grasp of a robberfly, is powerless to escape.
They will attack most any insect, and are even bloodthirsty enough to catch and eat their own kind. Often they have become a nuisance in making their lair in the vicinity of an apiary, where they kill the honeybees. One of the larger species was observed during the summer capturing a "locust" or cicada. The robber-fly attacked the cicada on the wing about twenty feet from the ground, and the pair came whirling down. In this case the booty was too bulky to carry off to some convenient roost, as is generally the case. Fortunately robber-flies never attack man or animals, although if they are carelessly grasped they will sink their lancets into the flesh.
The larvae or "maggots" that hatch from the eggs laid by these flies are also carnivorous. Some of them live in the ground, where they hunt for food among the decaying vegetation; others make their home in rotting logs or beneath loose bark of dying trees, where they hunt and feed upon other softbodied insects. If we follow the fortunes of one of these larvae or "maggots," we will find that after consuming sufficient food and overwintering, it will go through the usual transformation, emerging finally from the pupal case a perfect robber-fly-and real robber.
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