【33mm】Extremely Hammerhead-headed Fly Specimen - *Hirokuchibae* Shu

Scientific Name: Achias rothschildi

This is a type of fruit fly with an incredibly hammer-shaped head, created by insect specimen artist Takahiro Fukui. And it's huge. I wonder how it sees... It's the kind of fly that makes you tweet things like, I feel a strange similarity between the necks of leaf beetles and the eyes of stalk-eyed flies (though this isn't technically a stalk-eyed fly).

Some species have prominent eye stalks, similar to those found in the family Diopsidae. In Diopsidae, the eye stalks develop from the lateral development of the frons, resulting in the antennae being located on the eye stalks near the compound eyes. The developmental process of signal flies differs: the frontal orbital plates expand laterally to form the eye stalks, leaving the antennae in a central position. This is an example of convergent evolution. The development of eye stalks reaches its extreme in Achias rothschildi Austen, 1910, a species of Platystomatidae from West Papua, Indonesia, where the male's eye span can reach up to 55 mm.

Please note that we cannot guarantee against grade reduction due to shipping.
We will ship the exact specimen pictured, collected in Fakfak, West Papua, Indonesia, in November 2024.
When I measured it, the eye span was 33 mm.