Monster of the Day #96

As Sandy pointed out, the wings would be really hard to do convincingly. The Deadly Mantis’ wings just looked silly (at best).

(Of course, the one shot they used of a real mantis was very effective.)

John, not only are they carnivores, they’re damn good at it. Supposedly their eyesight is so keen that they can see gnats and things of that size at a distance of several yards.

As for the closed captioning, write the studios, write Netflix, write the captioning folks, write everyone you can think of. I imagine the main reason all films aren’t captioned is cost–someone has to sit there and transcribe the movie, sound effects, and so on. Many DVD offerings are probably not captioned because someone said, “We probably won’t get any additional rentals or sales if we add captioning, so let’s just skip it.”

BC: Yeah, there is that, as he said. Still, I’d have taken crappy flying shots to get a giant dragonfly movie. It couldn’t have looked any worse than the Giant Claw…

JC: Yeah, they are ravenous; one nickname for them is “mosquito hawk.” The larvae will eat mosquito larvae, tadpoles, minnows…anything they think they can handle. Once adults, they eat gnats, mosquitoes, and flies. Their speed and eyesight let them catch prey in midair, and their limbs form a basket to hold the prey so they can eat while flying.

Between their hunger, their speed, and their wicked mouthparts (larvae have an extendable hooked pincer under their head, adults have two pairs of sharp tearing mandibles under a protective hood), it’s astounding to me they’ve not been used.

They’re obviously a well designed predator as they’ve hardly changed in 300 million years. And really, as “living fossils” go dragonflies (and cockroaches and horseshoe crabs) put coelacanths to shame.

A Mosquito Hawk, at least in local terms, isn’t a dragonfly. Mosquito Hawks look just like mosquitos, they’re just much, much larger and are supposed to feed on regular mosquitos. They can get a big as your thumb (nose to tail-tip), and are probably the true source of the joke that the mosquito is the State Bird of many a southern state. I’ve known people who moved here from the West and been freaked out by seeing a mosquito hawk for the first time, thinking them to be giant mosquitos. Mosquito hawks are harmless to humans, and unlike similar flying insects of the same size, don’t even bite or sting.

I’d been dreaming of making a period 50s giant bug movie someday, and a dragonfly was going to be my menace. Either that or a stick insect, since we have both in abundance around here and both look like they could sufficiantly terrorize a city if grown to proper size. The mental image of either clinging to a skyscraper (much like that shot in Mant!) makes me feel all warm and cozy.

The Deadly Mantis only had one moving wing! Frankly, I’ve seen far worse flying scenes.

Giant wasps were the subject of Monster From Green Hell, sort of. Any blemishes the film has are negated by the scene of a giant stop-motion wasp-monster fighting with a giant python!

I haven’t heard anyone call them anything but “crane flies” since I moved here. I don’t refer to dragonflies as “mosquito hawks” either, but recalled it as a nickname for them from my youth (I’m from the Midwest).

Sandy: Yeah, wasps are also one I’m surprised they have hardly used. We’ve got, what, Green Hell and Food of the Gods? As far as dragonflies, I figured they’d just swoop in and grab people off the ground, reality be damned. Maybe a scene with hang gliders. These would obviously not be Giant Mantis-sized critters; maybe bus-sized.

Sometimes regional terms don’t go too far. I have a friend who was born farther south but in the same state. What I call Cicadas (or Jar Flies, they’re big, noisy, and have a bite that’ll knock you to your knees), HE grew up calling locusts. I’m not sure there’s a spot in the country where people don’t know what a locust is (which is to say, flying grasshoppers), so I don’t know what caused this confusion.

I never knew that cicadas had that powerful of a bite; they are usually thought of as being pretty harmless (I’m in the NYC area). Actually, when I was growing up we visited my grandmother in Louisville every summer- the kids down there would gather what looked to me like a cicada and fly them with a string tied to their leg. They may have called them June Bugs, I dunno, it was a long time ago. But, no bite.

By way of that- we do have some cool bugs up here: Cicada Wasps. They are very large and intimidating by sight (black and yellow stripes, a good inch and a half long), and dig long and intricate tunnels that make them impossible to get rid of. Thankfully they don’t really attack humans, just the cicadas. It is quite a sight watching them from your deck flying while carrying a stunned cicada in its legs, off to the tunnel for God knows what.

But what if they all suddenly turned on us?!! Dun Dun DUNNN…

I’ve heard others say that cicadas don’t bite, or don’t bite all that hard. I was bit once as a kid and avoided them ever since, they bite and they hurt bad! (I’ve also been at odds with some as to the fact that katiedids -green locust like critters that screech at dusk- bite, after relating how I’d been bitten by one. I was later vindicated when a captive katiedid chomped down on someone’s finger.) Its the cicadas that leave little larva husks attatched to trees around here (just like dragonflies, but bigger). I used to collect these husks, thinking they’d make great giant monsters, what with their crab-like claws and bettle-like bodies.

June Bugs are pretty common around here too. They look like flying green beetles. I’ve heard of attatching a string to them, but I could never get a knot around those little legs myself. They have a good grip, but aren’t known for biting. I understand they CAN bite, but not very hard.

I have never heard of cicadas biting people, but then I almost never see one, just hear them. (I have found a lot of shells over the years, though. We had a tree whose super-rough bark was apparently very appealing to the cicades, as we’d find several shells on it every time they molted.) Same with June bugs, and I’ve held a few of those over the years. Grasshoppers, locusts, and katydids, yeah, they’ll bite, and it’ll hurt, although usually ‘hoppers just spit that black stuff out at you.

The first cicada killer wasp I saw here in Dallas, I thought it was a dragonfly until it landed. Then a Ranger Rick article I read probably 20 years ago flashed back from the depths of my mind, and I remembered what they were. Later that year, one nearly crashed into my head in the pool. I guess its cicada cargo was too heavy, and it fell from the sky and hit the water. It had to fly off without its cargo, which I scooped up, examined, and then set on the side near a grassy area, wondering if the wasp would happen to come back and find it. They are pretty damn cool.

You might be right, Sandy, the bite certainly sounds correct, as I remember a big, ugly, painful welt on my thumb from the bite. Just how aquatic are they, as their names imply? I was well away from any bodies of water when I got hit (I grabbed it off a tree in the back yard, where the cicadas usually hang out), so do they migrate between their watery homes? Or maybe fly ‘inland’ to find food from time to time?

Here’s one time I can sort of get behind a CGI monster. Centipedes are so sickly and shiney looking, they’d be a good match for computer animation. I’d say centipedes don’t get much play because they’d be so complex to build/operate/animate, what with all those constantly moving legs. Even creepier would be a variety of centipede we have around here. They look like cave bugs of some sort, with long hair-like legs and a pale bluish color. They’re fast too!

Could be what are called June Bugs are different critters between the US and Canada (just look at how many parts of the US give the same name to different bugs). Here in the Ozarks, June Bugs are flying pretty green beetles about as big as the end of your thumb. We also have some smaller brown ones that are built very much like June Bugs, but I’m not sure what they’re called (I think I’ve heard them called May Bugs before). I’m not sure what hit Toronto, but they don’t sound like the kind of June Bugs we have here. (For what its worth, June Bugs are listed in an American insect field guide I have from the early 60s. The picture matches the June Bugs I grew up with.)

This has probably been the most educational Monster of the Day yet!