A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
1133 entries
crane fly
The crane fly is a long-legged fly that looks like an oversized mosquito and is not one. Adults do not bite and mostly do not feed at all, living a few days to mate. The legs break off at the slightest pull, which is a deliberate escape mechanism, so a crane fly in a spider web often leaves a leg and goes. The larvae live in soil, rotting wood, or stream sediment, and it is the larvae that do all the eating.
Etymology
The English name is for the legs, after the wading bird. Popular names are more inventive and mostly wrong about the animal: daddy longlegs in Britain, which also names two unrelated arachnids, and mosquito hawk or gallinipper in parts of the American South, both of which imply a predator that does not exist. The larva has its own name, the leatherjacket, from its tough gray skin.
Notes
Crane flies are among the most numerous insects in temperate wetlands and are a major food source for birds and fish, and the larvae process a large share of decaying plant matter in soil and stream beds. Over 15,000 species have been described. A few Arctic and alpine species are wingless.