A robber fly is one serious looking insect. In this photo by Tom Houser, the big bearded beast reminds me more of an angry buffalo than a bug. Houser photographed the fly at his home in Kemspville in ...

Recently, while sitting outside enjoying a remarkably beautiful summer day, a rather scary-looking fly landed on my arm. Luckily I knew it was some kind of robber fly and that they are more into ...

Robber flies are predatory insects that catch their prey, which are other insects, while flying. Their eyesight is amazing. They have been compared to falcons of the bird world. The one we see in the ...

ROBBER FLY! Hanging thief! Bee Killer! Assassin! Just how bad can a fly be to have such unflattering names? The fly in the photo peering into Catherine Miller’s Kempsville home and into her camera ...

April in the Florida Panhandle. It was hot, humid, and a thunderstorm was lurking. But as a fresh graduate student, I was relieved for the escape from my first brutal Minnesota winter. I was ...

A robber fly perched on a flat piece of sandstone in the red rock country of the Colorado Plateau. The choice of perch was not arbitrary, for here the robber had a view in all directions. It flew off, ...

While many flies are content to land on pieces of fruit or carrion, robber flies (Asilidae) engage in mortal combat. Intercepting smaller insects on the wing, robber flies dine on anything they can ...

Among insects, robber flies are master predators, unforgettable once you’ve seen one in action. Rather than chase down their prey, robber flies use a “sit-and-wait” tactic, spending most of their time ...

This is the summer of the cannibal flies. For people fascinated by the boundless diversity of insects, that’s a good thing. For subordinate bugs, the cannibal-fly bonanza is very bad. Cannibal fly is ...

Naturalists have noticed for at least a century that insects have a way of mimicking each other. Butterflies of two species not closely related often show similar patterns of bright colors.