Giant Mosquito?

Mee, knowing my interest in insects and other creepy-crawlies, always takes pictures of unusual creatures that she comes across and sends them to me - millipedes, golden bugs, birds that flew into the house and most recently she sent me via Yahoo! IM a photo of what she said was a Gaint Mosquito found sharing her shower! I could imagine the scene in my mind - which inspired this cartoon :)

As for the Big Mozzie, well at a glance it does look like a huge mosquito, but on closer inspection it doesn’t have a piercing, blood-sucking syringe and so it isn’t one. It is in fact a crane fly in the Tipulidae family, which like mosquitoes, also belongs to the insect order Diptera.

Crane flies are large long-winged, long-legged and slim-bodied flies, their legs are easily detached (the one in the photo has lost 2 legs). There are thousands of species of crane flies known to science, however most adult crane flies are harmless to human but the immatures (larvae) of some species that live in the soil are serious pest of crops, the larvae of most species are aquatic.