Well, one of those things is true. Mostly. It can’t hurt you. No venom or anything. The bite would probably be a little painful and cause some minor mechanical damage, but probably the psychic damage would hurt more, lol. Not near as bad as a bee sting or anything with venom behind it, though.
I wonder about that. Horseflies don’t have venom, either, but their bites can be more painful than typical bee stings, and they’re significantly smaller than this. Longhorn beetle mandibles aren’t designed for biting large mammals like horsefly mouths, but still.
Horseflies are like getting stabbed with a large-gauge, sadistic needle because that’s kind of what’s happening. The skin of ungulates like horses is very thick, much more than ours, and their bites hurt horses. From Wikipedia (and verifiable on photos lol): “The mouthparts of females are formed into a stout stabbing organ with two pairs of sharp cutting blades, and a spongelike part used to lap up the blood that flows from the wound.” So like, if a fat tapered needle was also knife-scissors. Lots of mechanical damage. It’s also a stabbing type motion, which can do more damage than a pinching motion— pinchy bits can only hurt as much flesh as can get between them, and that’s a big beetle but the way pinchy mouthparts are shaped really doesn’t allow for them to get a good grip on a midsize mammal like us. If you were pressing their faces against your flesh, that would probably be an intensely unpleasant experience (someone in this thread mentioned getting one stuck in their clothes— that’s not an experience I’d want with one of these guys, since it would be both pressing against your skin and likely feeling defensive, and that would probably put it in the position to render us the most damage it could do to us? But short of a situation like that, or like someone pressing its face against their skin for one of those shock videos on yt, I can’t see it getting in position to get a good grip on an adult human’s flesh.) those jaws weren’t made for eating us. Horseflies, on the other hand, very much were lol.
So I think the difference is more or less what you described: one is designed to hurt mammals for a blood meal, the other (I THINK) is designed to bore holes in trees via a scrapey-chewy motion. They’ve got the force to hurt us, we are softer than trees, but the shape literally gets in the way. (Not that I’d stick my fingers in there, especially if I had small fingers? Or like the tip of your nose or a lip or something? That would probably be the way to get the nastiest injury off of one these guys, and I suspect that would probably be quite painful? But I think they’re probably intimidating enough to dissuade most folks from trying to kiss or poke them in the face lol)
I remember reading about horseflies 2 decades ago and the way it was described has haunted me ever since. “Razor-like mandibles designed to lacerate the skin.”
It's their saliva that causes problems, they're is a blood thinning protein in it that causes an allergic reaction same as mosquitos. I know because I'm extremely allergic to it. The longhorn uses its mandibles to cure on wood and not to make animals bleed. Got born by a dragonfly ones, hurts like hell but didn't give the allergic reaction I got from bloodsuckers
I know you meant to say bit but instead you put born and now I'm imagining a sci-fi fantasy giant dragonfly giving birth to some spectacular Human… And I guess you are it!
Anticoagulants! Keep us bleeding longer!
I wasn’t sure if horseflies had them in their saliva, but it doesn’t surprise me. Most things that feed on blood benefit from having stuff in their mouths that makes you bleed longer.
Sympathies on the allergies; I too am allergic to most things that drink blood 😭
I figured dragonflies have the equipment to bite, but I'm fortunate enough for it to have never happened to me. I've allowed them to land on my hand numerous times without incident. Did you provoke it somehow?
If that thing bit me, I’d hurt myself jerking away and jumping around and running into the door jamb and slinging my arms and every damn thing else!!! Then I’d swear I was dying!
Relatively speaking, likely yes. Though I still wouldn’t recommend trying firsthand? And ofc pain tolerance varies. But as I said elsewhere, the shape of pincers like this don’t actually lend themselves to getting a lot of flesh between them, and behaviorally these animals are more inclined to flee than fight. They look more intimidating than they are. Tho again don’t go pressing them against your skin for kicks and I’d much prefer not to be one of the other folks in this thread that reported getting one stuck in their clothes.
I’d rather get bit by this guy than stung by a wasp, though like, my main answer would be ‘neither, please’ and that’s also the most reasonable answer lol.
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u/Whyonthefly 4h ago
Thanks for a real answer! Was hoping someone would bother lol