Any idea what this insect is?

[The Bear]

Any idea what this insect is? About 20mm long any pale green in the flesh. Got quite a few of them indoors. House is a building site at the mo so lots of places for them to get in. Mrs bear is concerned they may be the carpet or clothing eating type so am keen to identify

Cheers

Mark

 

[--Tom--]

Looks like a Lacewing (Neuroptera spp)

 

[galleywood]

+1

 

[profchris]

Yup, lacewing. Their larvae eat other insects, adults mainly nectar etc.

 

[Lons]

+1
Harmless, we've had a few sheltering indoors this winter.

 

[The Bear]

Thanks everyone
Mark

 

[doctor Bob]

Harmless to start with until they grow into this:

 

[Lons]

Harmless to start with until they grow into this:

:lol: :lol: :lol:

 

[Suffolkboy]

Harmless to start with until they grow into this:

:lol: :lol: :lol:

Nah. just pour a kettle of boiling water over it.

 

[Bm101]

Stop eating my Woolen Cardigan put away in storage you Bitch.

 

[Robbo3]

The brilliant thing about the lacewing is that it has developed a method of avoiding being caught by a bat by folding its wings at the last moment so that it drops out of the flight path & the bat overshoots.

 

[John Brown]

Interesting. According to a short film I saw at Bletchley Park, some carrier pigeons do a similar thing to frustrate falcons.

 

[MikeG.]

The brilliant thing about the lacewing is that it has developed a method of avoiding being caught by a bat by folding its wings at the last moment so that it drops out of the flight path & the bat overshoots.

How does it detect the bat? Is it hearing the ultrasonic clicks, perhaps? Sight would seem unlikely given this arms race is happening in the dark.

 

[DrPhill]

How does it detect the bat? Is it hearing the ultrasonic clicks, perhaps? Sight would seem unlikely given this arms race is happening in the dark.

The rising pitch of the background music?

 

[Robbo3]

"A more realistic picture of behavior emerged from studies on freely flying green lacewings and bats (Figure 3). Bat signals at low repetition rates, possibly combined with low intensities, cause insects to fold their wings and passively dive. The green lacewing shows this nondirectional early-warning response to bats' searching signals (Figure 3, between flashes 2 and 3). The bat increases its call rate as it approaches a falling insect (Figure 3, flashes 3 to 4). Just before capturing its prey, the bat increases its repetition rate to a maximum of about 200 signals per second in the terminal phase for most bats (Figure 3, flash 5). During the terminal phase, the insect suddenly flipped open its wings (Figure 3, flash 5 arrow), presumably in response to the high repetition rate signals. This last-chance response breaks the dive and foils the bat in this case, after which the insect continues its dive (Figure 3, flash 6). Artificial bat signals mimicking the sequence shown in Figure 3 evoke the same behavior (Miller and Olesen 1979). By repeating the experiments with deafened green lacewings, we showed that the selective advantage of reactors over nonreactors was 47%, or about the same as that found for moths (see Miller 1982). Unidentified neurons in the prothoracic ganglion respond to ultrasound, but their role in eliciting behavior is unknown (Miller 1984)."

- https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/art ... 570/268256

Lots of info & studies by looking up how insects avoid bats.

I remember being shown a film at school back in the 60s, from the Moody Institute I think, showing a bat passing through moving fan blades, where the speed was adjustable & when the bat knew the blades were moving too fast. It also included a clip of a lacewing avoiding a bat.

 

[DrPhill]

Very interesting.... thanks for posting that.

((and it was the increasing frequency of the 'music'.... ))

 

[Suffolkboy]

I had a pet praying mantis that loved lacewings. They may be able to avoid bats but they couldn't get past him.