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Fruit flies are pretty small. But they laugh at a species of fly recently discovered in Thailand. Dubbed¹ Euryplatea nanaknihali, this member of the phorid fly family is less than half a millimeter long—a fifth the size of a fruit fly.

But before you ooh and aah over the “cute widdle bug,” bear in mind that it probably makes its living cutting off the heads of tiny ants. The fly is described in the Annals of the Entomological Society of America.

Many phorid species lay their eggs in living ants. The newly hatched larvae² move to the ants’ heads, feed on them and eventually decapitate them.

But some ants were considered immune to the parasitic³ threat because they were too small for any known fly species to fit into their heads. With the discovery of the littlest phorid fly, however, that size advantage—or rather, lack-of-size advantage—vanishes.

It’s not definite yet, but the new little fly probably is an ant eater: its pointy abdomen⁴ is well adapted to pierce an ant’s body for egg-laying purposes. How adorable is that?

Thanks for the minute for Scientific Americans 60 second Science, I am Sophie Bushwick.

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收听单词发音

1 dubbed
v.给…起绰号( dub的过去式和过去分词 )；把…称为；配音；复制
参考例句：
Mathematics was once dubbed the handmaiden of the sciences. 数学曾一度被视为各门科学的基础。 Is the movie dubbed or does it have subtitles? 这部电影是配音的还是打字幕的？来自《简明英汉词典》

2 larvae
n.幼虫
参考例句：
Larvae are parasitic on sheep.幼虫寄生在绵羊的身上。 The larvae prey upon small aphids.这种幼虫以小蚜虫为食。

3 parasitic
adj.寄生的
参考例句：
Will global warming mean the spread of tropical parasitic diseases?全球变暖是否意味着热带寄生虫病会蔓延呢？ By definition,this way of life is parasitic.从其含义来说，这是种寄生虫的生活方式。

4 abdomen
n.腹，下腹(胸部到腿部的部分)
参考例句：
How to know to there is ascarid inside abdomen?怎样知道肚子里面有蛔虫？ He was anxious about an off-and-on pain the abdomen.他因时隐时现的腹痛而焦虑。