Saturday 23 May 2009

Fantastic Fly II

I found another fantastic fly with long eye stalks! Although this guy looks very similar in appearance to members of the Diopsidae (Stalk-eyed Flies Family) it belongs to the family Tephritidae (commonly called Peacock Flies) a group of colourful fruit-flies that do not usually have stalk eyes, so I was told. These photos were taken at the same place where I photographed my first "eye-stalked fly" (see my earlier post Fantastic Fly).

My neice said it looks like a motorcycle (with the eye-stalks as the handles)! So maybe Mat Rempit* Fly or Hell's Angel Fly! I used to think of them as "hammerhead" flies.
I hope some Dipterist (=fly scientist) would see this post and enlighten us on the identity of this fantastic insect.

*Mat Rempit is the Malay word describing the daredevil (illegal) motorbikes racers that plague the streets in many cities and towns in Malaysia.

7 comments:

adam k. said...

that sir is an amazing find! i love this blog :)

Unknown said...

Hi,
This is a fly from the family Tephritidae. To be sure one has to study an intact specimen under the microscope, but I have seen similar flies from Peninsular Malaysia.
Diopsids always have their antennae at the tip of the eye-stalks, in this case they are in the middle.
Good pictures!

Borneo Born said...

Hi Misi,
Thanks for the correction and info re the flies.
Highly appreciated.
Joe

Friend of HK said...

A very interesting looking bug! Never seen anything like that before!

RWS said...

great capture

Noushka said...

Truly amazing!
We have nothing looking like this in Europe!

sky said...

Hi, my name is Ivy, a Life Science student from National University of Singapore (NUS).

I am currently taking a module which required us to research on a species and do a wiki-like species page for it (evolution.science.nus.edu.sg/) . I choose to work with stalk-eyed flies.

In the process of search, I came across your blog. I would like to ask if it is possible to use your photo of stalk-eyed Tehpritidae(the motor-cycle flies) for my species page? I am trying to let my audience know that apart from Diopsidae, there are other flies with stalks too.

Please be ensure that the species page will be for non-commercial purposes, and ALL images used in the page will be properly be cited.

Hope to hear from you soon.

Thank you!