Zyzzyx This…
Nope, that’s not snoring in Czech. Nor the name of a new miracle drug guaranteed to line your digestive tract with a durable and pliable coating in your choice of designer colors. This strange word showed up in my Page-A-Day Trivia Calendar a couple of days back.
A zyzzyx is a small wasp that gets its name from the sound it makes while flying. From my in-depth research, I also discovered that this little bugger must be indigenous to Chile. Most of the information I found was written in a Chilean dialect of Spanish, so I learned to make use of the Google translator. It did a good enough job that I could kinda, sorta decipher what it was trying to tell me.
Wikipedia has this to say:
Zyzzyx is a monospecific genus of sand wasp, containing a brightly-colored, medium-sized species, Z. chilensis, named after the sound they make while flying. They were first studied in detail by H. Janvier (a.k.a. Claude-Joseph) in 1928, more than 100 years after they were first described.
They are primarily predators on flies, but have been observed to consume skippers.
So, next time you are in Chile and a smallish wasp buzzes you looking for flies while making a sound like zizz-zix, you can confidently point to it and say, “Wasp.”
6 Comments so far
“They are primarily predators on flies, but have been observed to consume skippers.”
Oh no they ate the Skipper what will Gilligan do?
I think I would be jumping up and down screaming …and swatting at the little fucker…
They eat flies huh. Maybe I could get some for my backyard for use during barbecues. The flies are very annoying when you are trying to serve food. I am sure the Calif Department of Agriculture would love it if I imported a foreign species.
I assume you are a frustrated Scrabble player?
Stu… you repeat yourself. All Scrabble players are frustrated. Yes and yes.
So sea captains should avoid them then?
It’s not in my Chambers (which is the official reference dictionary for Scrabble).
Tautology.