Hellgramite (or Dobsonfly)



Facts
- Develop from one to four years
- Carnivorous and may bite
Description
- One to four inches long
- Mouth has large, chewing pinchers
- Six segmented legs on middle section of body with tiny pinchers at the end of each
- Many fleshy, filamentous appendages on each side of the abdomen
- Back end is forked with two short tails and two hooks on each tail
- Gill tufts on the underside of the tail that look like "hairy armpits"
- Dark brown to black in color
- Often confused with fishfly but fishfly is smooth on underside with no gill tufts
- abdomen
- appendages
- carnivorous
- gill tufts
- segmented