Every now and then, you notice something catching a free ride — mites on a beetle, algae on a snail, or some tiny insect clinging to a bigger one. Sometimes I only spot them when looking back at photos. Thought it could be fun to have a place to share those little tag-alongs if you’ve found any.

Every time I notice a arthropod on my car when driving, a variation of the thought “Would those genes ever have had a chance to spread here without me giving it a lift? Hope you like the change of scenery little guy.” pops into mind :slightly_smiling_face:

There are a couple of projects for animals intentionally hitchhiking on other animals, sometimes just for the ride, sometimes with more sinister plans: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/phoresy https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/passengers-parasites-taking-rides

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/213855033 Was literally in a kleenex box; no idea where it got in it

[image] ilenisaatio: Would those genes ever have had a chance to spread here without me giving it a lift? Arthropods are pretty good at self-distributing even without human help – we just extend the speed and distance of travel. Many of them have wings. Others hitch rides on creatures that do…

[image] spiphany: What impresses me the most are the zooplankton who somehow manage to colonize seasonal puddles, often astonishingly quickly, in spite of the lack of any obvious route that would allow them to get there. That is an interesting achievement, I have to admit. Travelling on birds…

This photo immediately popped into my head when I saw this topic. It is from summer 2013 in Colorado. You can see a few orange mites hitching a ride on the legs of some young Eastern Box Elder Bugs. I posted the photo rather than the link for iNat as I wanted to do a better job editing the photo. It…

Since it is called a Smooth Turtle Leech I don’t know how truly “unexpected” it was, except to me since, it was a first for me. The leech has hitched a ride on a Striped Mud Turtle. Gainesville, FL. [DSCN8389]

I have frequently documented mites “riding” on carrion beetles and large ground beetles. I learned that those mites are usually not parasitic in the strict sense but abuse the beetle for a free ride from one carcass to the next. It is unclear to me if/what a possible advantage for the beetle could…

Unexpected hitchhikers

Nature Talk

tiwane September 11, 2025, 7:16pm 3

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Unexpected hitchhikers

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