Hippoboscidae

Jelenja uš, originally uploaded by natalija2006.

I went for a hike along the Allegheny Front Trail this Sunday and I got lost. Not really badly lost, just frustrated lost. The-directions-say-ignore-trail-so-I-ignore-trail-here-right? lost. As I was bushwhacking my way back to the trail from one of my unfortunate detours, I felt a slight pinch at my neck. My hand found a little critter sucking on my delicious blood- a deer ked.

Deer keds belong to the family Hippoboscidae, a very special family of parasitic flies. They have stout dark hairs on their bodies and long legs that curl themselves around your finger. Their wings are fine and diaphanous. What is most shocking about Hippoboscids is just how flat they are. I tried to squish the little blood-thief that I found on my neck, but he just wouldn't squish. I couldn't make him any flatter than he already was.

Deer keds typically spend their early life flying around looking for a nice, juicy host deer to suck on. Once they find one, they use their prehensile feet to nestle themselves into the deer's fur. Their wings aren't necessary anymore, so they break them off and settle down. You can see one wing gone in the picture of the Hippoboscid above - perhaps he fell off while he was still trying to get comfortable on his chosen deer. Deer keds find love on their deer host, and little deer keds are birthed shortly thereafter.

The female deer ked does not lay eggs like most insects. Instead she nurtures a single larva at a time in her abdomen, waiting until it is nearly full-grown before she releases it. Deer ked reproduction is not unlike our own in this respect. They have an organ that can only be described as a "uterus," and glands that can only be described as "milk" glands, with which they feed the larva until it is big enough to pupate. The mother deer ked then releases the larva and it drops to the ground where it immediately begins the transformation into an adult by pupating. No activity is apparent during the pupal stage. The little brown capsule of the puparium, however, hides profound changes. In the puparium, the deer ked goes from a legless, eyeless, featureless white bag of goo to a hairy, strong flier with excellent eyesight and a vampiric drive. Eventually the adult deer ked emerges from its protective puparium and flies off to find its own nice, juicy deer.

The life cycle of the deer ked reminds me a lot of our own. We are cared for by our mothers for years, then released to the world that sometimes expects us to immediately begin functioning as an adult. But all of us need a period of pupation. Time to change, to grow, to transition from the old way of life to the new way. In some way, every period of our life is probably a time to pupate and prepare for the next phase.