Found a skull of a wasp? (I think)

Gotham

I found this skull, I think it's a wasp. I am not good with zoology.

Does anyone know more about this species?
Can you estimate how long its been dead for?

http://imgur.com/a/vkkJk

Sorry for bad macro photography.

Thanks.

Galvasean

A hoverfly maybe? It can be quite hard to tell the two apart.

Gotham

Thanks for the reply.

I wouldn't be great at comparing those images, they look quite similar to me anyway.

I'd like to point out the 3 red ball shaped "eye-like-things" that look like they are popping out of the back of the head in one of my images. I've never seen anything like that before, does anyone know what those are?

http://i.imgur.com/f0JAHs8.jpg

aidoh

It's definitely a wasp head.
Those three "eye-like-things" are exactly that!They're called ocelli. In addition to the huge compound eyes on the sides of the head, the ocelli on the top detect changes in light so that insects with ocelli can quickly react to predators above them. It gives them essentially a 360 degree view of their environment.
Cool picture though, when did you find it?

Gotham

aidoh wrote: »

It's definitely a wasp head.
Those three "eye-like-things" are exactly that!They're called ocelli. In addition to the huge compound eyes on the sides of the head, the ocelli on the top detect changes in light so that insects with ocelli can quickly react to predators above them. It gives them essentially a 360 degree view of their environment.
Cool picture though, when did you find it?

This is a brilliant explanation thanks!
Funny story how I found it. I was sitting down with my girlfriend ready to watch a movie and I noticed there was a small bump on her trousers. I poked it to see what it was and she jumped up in confusion. She ran into another room to check what this thing under her jeans was... it was the wasp head, but it was too small to see clearly with the naked eye.
I took a look at it, it was really firm, I thought it was a bit of plastic that broken off something. After a few minutes inspecting against the light, I thought I could see some hairs.
I'd done some amateur macro photography before so I took out the camera and sure enough, I got enough detail to see it.
Very weird, we can only speculate that it flew into the house and died in a drawer or something.
It looks like it had been there a while, but we found no other remains.

recedite

Gotham wrote: »

we can only speculate that it flew into the house and died in a drawer or something.

Admit it, you placed the lucky wasp head in her jeans prior to the movie night, didn't you

maria_81

Interesting thread and pics.

Insects don't have "skulls" though, do they? Better description would be "head", right?

Nuclear Wheelchair

Exohead

maria_81

do i have an endohead then?

Nuclear Wheelchair

Sounds about right.