World’s Smallest Fly Looks Like Schwarzenegger, Eats Victims From Inside Out

A newly discovered species might be the world’s smallest fly, but it is pumped up like Arnold Schwarzenegger and it kills other insects in brutal fashion.

The fly, a parasitic insect now named Megapropodiphora arnoldi for the Austrian bodybuilder, movie star and former California governor, is only 0.395 millimeters long, insect scientist Brian Brown wrote in a new paper, in the Biodiversity Data Journal. That’s shorter than one-tenth of an inch but it’s the bulging shape of the teeny creature’s front legs, reminiscent of Schwarzenegger’s muscular arms, that earned the fly its moniker.

“The forelegs are extremely enlarged, whereas mid- and hind legs are reduced to small, possibly vestigial remnants,” according to the study. The female fly Brown collected also has a “relatively enormous head” and tiny stubs for wings.

With a body length of 0.395 millimeters, the Schwarzenegger fly manages to skate just beneath the previous barbell for world’s smallest smallest fly — which was 0.4 millimeters.

Brown was the scientist who previously described that other fly, which has now been overthrown from its tiny throne, journal publisher Pensoft Publishers explained. Brown said in the publisher’s statement that the new titleholder “is known only from one female specimen that we almost overlooked because it is so incredibly small.”

For such a little thing, the Schwarzenegger fly packs a hell of a punch. Brown, the entomology curator for the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, told International Business Times that after the fly hooks onto a target using its bulging forearms, it punctures the victim with a pointed part of its abdomen and injects its eggs.

“The eggs hatch and the resulting fly larvae feed on the inside of the host insect, eventually killing it,” he said.

One thing that remains unclear is who exactly that unlucky victim would be.

“Most phorid flies that are parasitoids attack ants or termites,” Brown explained. “They are very specific in the species of ant or termite that they attack. Because we caught this fly in a trap set out in the forest, we don’t know which species of ant or termite it could be.”

It’s thus far known only in Amazonian Brazil, according to the study, so U.S. ants and termites can at least breathe easy for now.