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On the sixth floor, where the flies and aquatic insects are kept, Shockley removed a tray covered in stalk-eyed flies.

We’ve got stalk-eyed flies; flies that are less than a millimetre in size; and my favourites, Mallophora robber flies, which look like massive bumblebees and are highly venomous.

Star Wars creator George Lucas did his best to make amends for the horrors of Jar Jar Binks in The Phantom Menace by virtually eliminating the bumbling Gungan from Attack of the Clones – bar a brief appearance in which the hapless stalk-eyed goon rubber-stamps the rise of the evil Empire.

The male stalk-eyed fly’s eyes “are both an ornament and a weapon,” says Christina Painting, a postdoctoral student of behavioral ecology at the University of Auckland.

When you think of a mollusk, you probably have something shelled, slimy, and possibly stalk-eyed in mind.