Just stumbled upon this great video talking about bat flies, something I had never heard off before. These are little critters of the fly family Nycteribiidae and they parasitize on various bat species
Nycteribiidae is a family of the true fly superfamily Hippoboscoidea are known as "bat flies", together with their close relatives the Streblidae. source
Sidenote, the super family Hippoboscoidea includes a fly you have probably heard of before, Tsetse flies!
Ok, back to bat flies. Those critters are just so damn weird!
Technically they are flies. Yet, they don't have wings.And their head is so fucking small they look like headless creatures. And they are essentially blind. And they walk a bit like spiders. And by walk I mean they run like tiny demons. And they feed like ticks!
Enjoy
Here's some more info about them for Wikipedia:
They are flattened, spiderlike flies without eyes or wings, and as such bear very little resemblance to other Dipterans. These flies are seldom encountered by general collectors, as they almost never leave the bodies of their hosts. Both males and females take blood meals, thus they qualify as real parasites. They have backward folded legs that resemble those of spiders and a dorsally inserted head. Most species are highly host-specific. The family is primarily found in the Old World tropics; a few of the 274 known species occur in the Neotropics and in Europe.source
Unfortunately, this seems to be the only decent video about them on YouTube. After all, catching one is really hard so it makes sense.
Hope you enjoyed learning about these fuckers. I know I did, nature never fails to amaze me 🤩