Mimegralla splendens

It has become my daily habit to closely observe the lives of various small creatures hidden in nature. This morning, while walking, I suddenly saw two strangely shaped insects on a green leaf. The legs are unusually long and the body is quite slimy. When I got closer, I saw that the two insects were busy breeding. Without delay, I captured the scene on my mobile camera. In English, these strange flies are called 'stilt-legged flies'.

​Scientific name:
​This interesting long-legged fly has a specific scientific name. In the scientific world, it is known as Mimegralla splendens. In 1830, the renowned scientist Wiedemann was the first to give it a scientific name.
​Family Genus:
​According to the scientific classification of biology, they are insects of the Insecta class of the Arthropoda order of the animal kingdom. They are mainly members of the Micropezidae family under the Diptera order. In the scientific world, their genus or genus name is Mimegralla.

​Physical structure and behavior:
​Their physical structure is quite interesting and completely different from other common flies. Their body is quite slender and their legs are very long and thin. They have a great self-defense technique; to deceive predators, they often move their front legs and imitate the movements of wasps, ants or stinging insects. This scares other animals away from them.

​Habitat and habitat:
​In terms of geographical distribution, they are mainly found in various countries in Asia, especially India and Sri Lanka. They usually prefer to live near trees or bushes, near decaying matter or in damp environments.

​Food and reproduction:
​In the picture I took, you can see the two flies breeding or mating. After the female flies lay their eggs, when the eggs hatch and the larvae emerge, they usually feed on decaying organic matter, dead leaves or tree roots in a damp environment and gradually turn into full-fledged flies.

​Benefits:
​They play a great indirect role in maintaining the balance of the environment. Their larvae help to quickly mix with the soil by eating decaying organic matter, which indirectly contributes greatly to increasing the health and fertility of the soil.

​Disadvantages:
​They are not directly harmful to humans in any way. They only pretend to be stinging insects for self-defense, but they do not bite anyone themselves or have a poisonous sting. Therefore, they are completely safe for the environment around us.

I hope you like the information.

I learned about them from various sites including iNaturalist, Wikipedia and Google.

_{​***(All posts are written in Bengali and translated into English using Google Translate.)***}