laina O'Brien ran back to staff housing on a busy morning at the camp to get the radio she forgot at her cabin
She wondered if she was hallucinating after looking down at the path. So what? It's. Is that true?
Is it a bug? There is a desiccated animal body.
It was on the staff trail, she said. I was wondering if I was seeing this for real. It's just a million bugs being herded by the other bugs.
The lodge is located in the Kantishna area at Mile 89 of the road that goes through the park and preserve.
She looked at a new fly called the gnat snakeworm. The professor of entomology at the University of Alaska Museum of the North said that they were traveling together as larvae.
The crawling column is made up of hundreds of long-lived insects. There are columns of larvae that can be up to 2 or 3 feet in length.
Since 2007, when a docent at the Museum of the North brought in a picture of the Alaska insects, Sikes has studied them.
He said that he had never heard of or seen this phenomenon before.
He was not the only person. The formation looked good, but not many people in the state saw it.
There have been reports of gnat snakeworms in the form of a column in three national parks. The first time the area was seen was in the national park.
He was able to figure out what type of fly it was by raising some of the adult flies. The gnat snakeworms were found to be a new species, distinct from their closest relatives in Europe, by looking at their genetics and examining their body parts.
It's not harmful to people because some people find it repulsive. It's not a problem for anyone. They are not aggressive. There isn't anything to worry about with them.
There were no observations of these formations in Alaska before 2007. There is no evidence that someone would have reported it.
It's not clear why the insects do it.
"We don't know why they migrate in these great numbers together and why they take this particular shape of a long column."
The official state bird is mosquitoes. Is they really that frightening?
There are at least two reasons why they travel like that. It's possible that they try to stay closer together on a road that's exposed to sunlight so they don't lose as much water.
They may be traveling that way because it makes them look bigger.
Most people have never experienced or seen a piece of nature like that. It is a rare phenomenon for most entomologists.
The research on the insect will be published later this year.
O'Brien said she saw the gnat snakeworms at the lodge and realized other people needed to see them. She told the guides to come and look at the place. The insects went off the path.
After it happened, the line of larvae disappeared.
There was nothing left behind when we returned a couple hours later.
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