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Old 07-12-2018, 07:46 AM
Kurt505 Kurt505 is offline
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Join Date: May 2009
Location: Communist state
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Quote:
Originally Posted by KodiakHntr View Post
Years ago, back when I was mostly a field monkey hanging ribbons we used to find great fun catching horse flies and using hip chain thread to hang a little loop around their heads and tie them off to the pickup antenna.

One day my coworker caught one, and we did the usual loop and tie with a little less than an antenna worth of line, so the horsefly could amuse himself flying around on his leash.

Wasn't a minute until a big hornet zoomed out of the brush and attacked the horsefly in the air, stung him, and then tried to fly away with it. He hit the end of the leash a couple times, and then hung on and fell to the end of the line. We snuck up on him, as we could see that he was doing something, and he was trying to chew through the line that was tied around the horseflies neck. If you are familiar with that thread, it is tough stuff, and made up of a bunch of thinner threads. Hornet gave up on the line, so he chewed through the horseflies neck and left his head hanging there and flew to a branch on a tree so he could eat the fly, then he split.

We looked at each other, and my coworker grabbed another horsefly to retie one up. As we are doing that, we noticed a hornet nest about 20m off the road. We end up catching two horse flies, and tying them off. Maybe 2 minutes later as they are both buzzing at the end of the leash, what I assumed to be the original hornet came zipping back, grabbed the fly, and didn't even try to fly away with him, just stung him and fell to the end of the line and started chewing his head off. As he leaves, another hornet grabs the other one, and DOES THE EXACT SAME THING.

Did the first one communicate with the second one? How did the second one know to not try to fly away with the fly immediately? How did he know to just chop off the fly head so he could take him?!?!?!

Creepy AF.
That's pretty wild for sure. It's amazing how intelligent they are.
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