Facehugger – 📸 by @piotr_naskrecki

At first glance, these strange creatures look like spiders or ticks, but they’re actually a type of wingless fly found exclusively on bats.

Batflies (nycteribiidae) are highly specialized parasites, and are seldom encountered by general collectors, as they almost never leave the bodies of their hosts.

After millions of years of evolving along side bats, these insects have equipped themselves for one job. They became flatter and very hard, almost impossible for the host to crush them.

They also have special “claws” on the end of each foot and course hairs on the end of each leg, making them extremely difficult to remove from the host.

Parasites are of the most facinating organisms on the planet, in the coming months we hope to cover a broad selection of them.