This guy was crawling up the wall in the ice cream shop where I work. We caught it in a small container and, not knowing what it was, tried giving it a dead fly and some melted ice cream. It rejected both. We let it go and it flew away to a nearby tree. Any ideas?
This is a wheel bug, Arilus cristatus, the largest assassin bug (Hemiptera/Heteroptera: Reduviidae) in much of the USA. They are voracious predators on other (living, not dead) arthropods, and specimens such as yours can deliver a painful defensive ‘bite’ if mishandled. See http://creatures.ifas.ufl.edu/trees/wheel_bug.htm for much more information on this fascinating ceature.
