The male's lengthy ornamental mandibles are used in breeding and defense. Rest assured, the males are harmless, but they will get your attention. It's the female dobsonfly you should be careful with.

But the male dobsonfly is truly the stuff of nightmares for the entomophobe. Its greatly elongated mandibles are about an 1½ inches in length.

The eastern dobsonfly is a very obvious insect that has a not-so-obvious connection with one of the Ozarks’ favorite pastimes – fishing ...

• The insect in the picture is a male dobsonfly, which is in the order Megaloptera and the genus Corydalus. However, a species identification is not possible without the full insect being visible.

Measuring at eight inches in wingspan and with a giant set of mandibles at its head, the flying dobsonfly is roughly the size of an adult human face, according to the Insect Museum of West China.

Reddit users and internet sleuths put their skills to the test when identifying this alien-looking dobsonfly found inside a home in Columbia, South Carolina.

Megaloptera may sound like something out of a Godzilla movie, but it’s actually the class of the giant dobsonfly, the new water insect heavyweight.