Hi, a strange occurrence had happened twice in my yard. At first I saw a Wandering Glider dead on my yard, decapitated, without head. Here is the pict. [IMG_6174] [IMG_6175] This was around november last year so I think it might have died somewhere and somehow flutters into my yard. But then thi…

The head is the most palatable part of dragonflies and butterflies. A great number of predators may eat only the head on both, including ones already mentioned. Wasps, other dragonflies, mantids, some birds, etc. [image] teellbee: I recall reading that male dragonflies can bite when subduing th…

I recall reading that male dragonflies can bite when subduing the mate. Perhaps your headless dragonfly is a more extreme example of that.

Insecta also can lose heads if they crash into something.

I once saw a wasp (Vespula germanica) grab a dragonfly and drag it around, the dragonfly was already dead at the time though. Then the wasp used its mandibles to cut off the dragonfly’s head. Maybe it was a wasp in your case, too? It may have been scared off by something and didn’t return to its pre…

Could be… but what about the butterfly ? It’s just baffling that the butterfly suddenly lose it’s head.

Could be, but for both case I don’t see the head anywhere near their body.

I don’t recon seeing a wasp near my area. The only similar thing to that I’ve seen around are honey bees and carpenter bees.

Thank you for the enlightenment on the subject. :smile: :smile: I’ll put dragonflies and mantids on my top suspect list. As for yellowjackets, I doubt they are present in my area (I’m in Indonesia btw). I did check for that specific genus in iNaturalist and no one in my country seems to have recor…

Not limited to insecta, of course. A talk with highway patrol folks in moose country here should confirm that. I’ve also heard that large moose bulls are surprisingly vulnerable to head attacks as there is such a heavy pre-existing strain on their musculature. Grizzly details, indeed.

(Update) I don’t quite know whether to put this here or not but… I just found another bug dead without a head again. This time a cockroach. Although I kind of doubt it was killed by the same predator due to the fact that I found it much later in the morning than the other two, which was at around d…

Mysterious Bug Predator Identification Help

Nature Talk

marina_gorbunova January 5, 2023, 6:11am 10

There’re enough of different vespids in any part of the world free of ice.

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Mysterious Bug Predator Identification Help

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