Crane Flies have nicknames "mosquito hawks" and "skeeter eaters"
Despite this, they do not actually eat mosquitoes. In fact, they literally can't eat any other insect at all. They go after nectar and sweet liquids and die pretty quick because their (adult) lifespan is pretty dang short.
Basically, people saw this incredibly harmless, equally incredibly mosquito-like fly and BS'd a positive trait about it so that less folk would kill it on impulse. "Imagine how many mosquitoes this thing could go through!"
|