New Book Excerpts #3: Bone Skipper Fly

Today’s morsel from my NEW BOOK is this beauty – the Bone Skipper Fly – a true Lazarus species that was thought to be extinct for 150 years. The illustration by Carim Nahaboo is another one of my favourites from the entire book. 

“This is one distinctive fly, what with its bright orange head and metallic blue body and legs. It’s so distinctive that entomologists couldn’t find it for more than 150 years.

To be fair, not all that many people were looking for it, and its habits are, shall we say, interesting – certainly unsavoury and specific enough to have put off casual observers who might otherwise have spotted it. You see, these flies (Thyreophora cynophile), are completely dependent on large mammal carcasses, such as those of deer, boar, dogs, sheep, cows and horses. To make life even more of a challenge for themselves, the larvae of these flies like to feed on marrow from within the long bones and spine of these carcasses. This is quite some niche.

Originally described in 1798, after a specimen was found in Mannheim, Germany on a dead dog (hardcore entomologists like nothing more than rooting around in dried carcasses), the species turned up a few times until 1850. It wasn’t seen again until 2007 when some entomologists working near Madrid in Spain found six of them in their pitfall traps which had been baited with moreish, rancid squid…”