Agulla ("Stretch") the snakefly, might not win any beauty contests, but as predicted last month in ScientificAmerican.com 's 60-Second Science podcast , its serpentine head and superlong neck helped it take home first prize in this year's Arizona State University's (A.S.U.) annual Ugly Bug Contest .
MARILEE SELLERS/THERRY THE/NORTHERN ARIZONA UNIVERSITY/PAGE BALUCH/ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY
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Agulla ("Stretch") the snakefly, might not win any beauty contests, but as predicted last month in ScientificAmerican.com's 60-Second Science podcast, its serpentine head and superlong neck helped it take home first prize in this year's Arizona State University's (A.S.U.) annual Ugly Bug Contest.
Weighing in at just four milligrams (and measuring about 15 millimeters long), this champion creepy-crawly corralled a triumphant 31 percent of the contest's 8,023 votes, easily edging out the second-place (and hardly beloved) Periplaneta americana ("La Cucaracha") American cockroach as well as third's Macrosiphon ("The Blade") aphid.
When they're not busy being photographed under microscopes by biologists, snakeflies are predatory insects that feast on aphids, caterpillars and beetles, and have been buzzing around since at least the Cretaceous period.
Compiled by A.S.U.'s "Ask A Biologist" initiative along with Northern Arizona University, the contest has been extolling ugly bugs since 1997, awarding its highest honor in 2008 to the tick.
In a similar contest from the Oklahoma Microscopy Society earlier this year, the praying mantis, sphinx moth, red leg tip centipede and robber fly—all collected by local elementary schools—won out as bugs with the ugliest mugs from a pool of 80 nasty nominees.
The least repulsive insect? This year, last place in A.S.U.'s contest went to fuzzy Apis "Sweetness" honeybee.
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