Have you seen that new species of fly?
No.
Ha, gotcha. Course you haven’t. It’s the world’s smallest fly, and is less than half a millimetre long, so you’d need a magnifying glass.
Good one.
You know they’ve named it after Arnold Schwarzenegger?
I’m not falling for that one too.
No, I’m serious. Brian Brown, the entomologist from LA’s Natural History Museum who discovered the fly, has named it Megapropodiphora arnoldi.
So the world’s smallest fly has the words “mega” and “Arnold” in its name? Talk about a disproportionate title.
You should read his essay in the Biodiversity Data Journal explaining why he called it that.
Hmm . . . might give that a miss actually.
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It includes the line: “As soon as I saw those bulging legs . . .”
Where can I get a copy?
To be honest, I think this comes from somewhere deep. Brown also wrote: “Not only is he a major cultural icon and an important person in the political realm, his autobiography gave me some hope that I could improve my body as a skinny teenager.”
How moving. So this is about a guy dedicating his work to his lifelong hero?
Partly, but it’s also just because they look so uncannily alike. Mega Arnie has a mammoth pair of front legs just like the bulging forearms of our favourite Hollywood muscle man.
Sure. And when you say “mammoth”, do you mean about a tenth of a millimetre?
Give or take a nanometre.
Ridiculous. This whole story is just one big bugbear. One thing we really don’t need any more of in this world is pesky flies.
Yeah, and guess what happens when you bat this one away?
It says: “I’ll be back.”