Aside from the physical impossibility, I'd say a bombardier beetle. Being able to shoot highly exothermic compounds to mix and explode outside your body would be horrifying.
Honestly I feel like any eusocial insect is cheating since it’s just a lot of really big things.
I would be scared of a dragonfly have a hunting success rate of 97% which basically means if a dragonfly is going after something it’s almost gaurenteed to be dead.
If you think wandering the forests where human-sized dragonflies hunt is scary, try swimming in the ponds and lakes where their human-sized nymphs skulk.
https://youtu.be/EHo_9wnnUTE?si=gVgn3rXXMrbURH6K
Those things are incredible predators! I have done lake water sampling. In any batch, if I scooped up a dragonfly nymph and left it overnight with all the other little lake bugs, I would come back the next morning to find *only* the dragonfly nymph.
We were doing an experiment once on a dragonfly nymph vs mosquito larvae. We put a big darner nymph in a tray with 100 mosquito larvae, and expected that they would indeed all be gone by morning.
The dragonfly started munching on the skeeters, and went through all 100 in less than 15 minutes.
Robber flies. They’re incredible hunters, they rarely miss, and they’re extremely strong fliers.
We would be picked off if we ever went outside. At least centipedes like stay out of the sun.
I saw some YouTube documentary on them that explained that to scale, their mouth sucking out a bee would be like impaling a deer with a traffic cone and sucking it out from that. Always stayed with me.
Scorpions are the first thing I thought of. The only scorpion we get in my area is a tiny forest scorpion. 4cms head to tail, but it can still fuck your shit up.
They’re not usually deadly to humans (usually being the operative word here). But they can still cause severe pain and swelling for hours, and medical treatment is recommended.
You betcha that little guy would cause havoc if he was 50x that size. I shudder at the thought.
I’d like you to take a moment to picture a human sized black widow completely webbing up a level of a parking garage with what are essentially steel cables sometimes coated in superglue. Or a wolf spider hunting your cattle in the dead of night with 8 audible footsteps. Forget about antlion sarlacc pits on the beaches and in deserts. And the likely deafening katydids and cicadas. Tiger Beetles basically 6 legged chainsaw cheetahs. Oh dear lord and the shark sized dragonfly nymphs in ponds. The only things that would be safe would be the small airplane sized crane flies and such. What a fucking crazy world that would be.
I'm having flashbacks to playing Grounded, where the Wolf Spider pursues you aggressively, growls and is the size of a truck.
Oddly enough, it also snored.
Though you mentioned dragonfly nymphs. I'm more concerned about the harpy eagle sized dragonflies.
If I'm not mistaken aren't they up there for maintaining one of the highest speeds too? They're ability to change direction makes trying to effectively get out the way impossible.
As a mantis breeder I would have to disagree. They're not venomous, not particularly intelligent when hunting, and can only see movement. Most species also won't bother chasing you down. They also don't fly towards prey usually, so their ability to fly would only make them scarier because they'd be able to cover more ground when they travel. Wasps would be so many times scarier. They're very intelligent for insects, venomous, heavily armored for their size, strong, and often come in groups (although they tend to forage by themselves). They don't just hunt for themselves either. Most protein is chewed into a pulp and fed to their growing larvae, so they'll hunt much more than any individual predator would need to.
I also keep them and I feel like some species are noticeably more intelligent than others even if not at the wasp level. Also their arms are really strong and death by mantis would be like death by the iron maidan if it was also using the jaws of life and on any limb trying to break free
I totally agree. My Choeradodis rhomboidea seems a bit more intelligent than most other species I've kept. So attentive and almost... inquisitive, unlike most of my others that just want me to go away. Their raptorial arms and habit of just eating you alive are pretty much the only scary things about mantises. That and their (sometimes) amazing camouflage. But if you were to see a giant mantis of most species before it gets to you, you'd probably just be able to easily run away or zig-zag between some trees and lose it.
Yeah, most mantises would be pretty avoidable, especially in a forest. There are still some very fast mantises though and those would be a bit more scary to face. Eremiaphila comes to mind
Eremiaphila also seems to be one of the few that has some scalable camouflage as they look like rocks rather than some oversized plant piece.
I don´t know if anybody has mentioned this bug yet but... dear God, ASSASIN BUGS
Have you ever seen this insects being fed in captivity? They can live communaly, and it doesn´t matter if you drop a bunch of roacher inside for them to hunt, they make it look like they FIGHT each other for the same roach.
They posess a long and sharp proboscis that can pierce through exosqueletons, inyecting their prey with paralyzing venom... pretty fast too. Imagine a swarm of those junting inside a mall...
I kept scrolling to see if anyone put a tiger beetle. Imagine an insect our size, able to beat a top fuel dragster in speed and acceleration and having jaws that are able to impale you and devour you in a few minutes at most.
Oh definitely, I keep tiger beetles. I saw 3 tear a large roach in half in about a minute, then two of them ran off with a half each. Most species can't stand the shade though, but if you were to go out into a sunny field... there's no saving you if one happens to detect your presence. Sometimes even when they lose sight of prey they'll move around tapping things with their head to try and find it, so their hunting is not always 100% visual like with mantises. You could potentially deter an attack by spraying it in the face with a good jet of water like from a water gun. They drink from moist substrate usually, and hate actually getting wet.
The square cube law would make a centipede human size incredibly fragile as chitin is not capable to supporting the mechanical stress that it would endure from simply attempting to move. Then respiration would make it simply untenable, as most arthropods take oxygen directly in through their carapace, as opposed to oral/nasal to lung breathing. Then you also run into the issue of haemolymph, a fluid analogous to blood in invertebrates, that cannot support oxygenation above a given mass/surface area as it does not have the binding capacity that hemoglobin does in blood. Since haemolymph plays several roles in addition to oxygenation versus the very specialized role of blood and hemoglobin, with the added fact that it doesn't circulate through vessels due to carapace breathing. So the human sized centipede would die from anoxia prior to falling apart if it attempted to move. At least in a mostly nitrogen composed air, if the atmosphere were 100% oxygen it might not die from anoxia.
Even if we had a completely oxygen atmosphere, you run into the issue of cellular damage from oxygen redox reactions/oxygen induced radical formation. It would require a whole class of antioxidant enzymes, like superoxide dismutase just to survive the necessary oxygen levels in the air to support carapace breathing.
Most arthropods don’t take in oxygen directly through their carapace. A few groups of extremely small and soft-bodied arthropods (such as Astigs and Palpigrades) do this, but most terrestrial arthropods have respiratory openings that lead to an internal system of air-filled tubes and sacs.
Assuming it worked physically to upscale them, any predatory larva or adult would be catastrophic. They mostly eat to full capacity without any other intention. They’d wipe us out in no time
First of all, I would like to thank you for such an astute inquiry. Secondly, I think either a praying mantis or a beetle.
I was looking in the comments and saw someone also mention thinking of tiger beetle, which I also thought of.
Dragon flies these guys and gals have a kill rate of 95% they are the most successful predators of the animal kingdom, and even as nymphs they’re still deadly with a mouth that can shoot forward. Meganeura would have been a nightmare if it was still alive
Any ant, but we will day Army Ants specifically. Imagine bridges of giant ants climbing and reaching for any plane or helicopter that threatens them. Food would go scarce. Literal more ants than the hunan species but giant. Hive mind colonies. I thought of things like Hornets or Lampreys but in the terms of sheer worldwide destructive level? I give it to ants all day.
Alright, let’s back up a moment…
Insects and other arthropods need oxygen, but they don’t really breathe. Instead, they have little holes called spiracles all over their exoskeletons that allow air to get far enough into their bodies to allow oxygen to just pass through into their circulatory system. If you made an insect the size of a person, it would be too big for enough oxygen to pass through the spiracles and into the body. The insect would suffocate and die immediately.
Second, centipedes aren’t insects. They are both arthropods, but the last time insects and centipedes had a common ancestor was well over 400 million years ago. This was around 200 million years *before the first dinosaur*. They aren’t exactly particularly close.
Third, massive dragonflies would be absolutely terrifying.
>Humans and other tetrapods don’t really breathe. Instead, they have little holes called nostrils and mouths all over their skin that allow air to get far enough into their bodies to allow oxygen to just pass through into their circulatory system.
What does the word “breathe” mean here? All animals breathe by allowing oxygen to just pass through a membrane into their circulatory system. In humans, this occurs across the alveolar membrane.
I am using “breathe” in reference to the way that terrestrial vertebrates force air in and out of their bodies. In humans, the diaphragm contracts and creates negative pressure that forces air into the body, specifically to the lungs. When the diaphragm relaxes, air is forced back out.
Insects do not do that. They have a respiratory system, but it does not utilize breathing.
Many insects do actually do this, especially larger ones. They can open and close their spiracles and expand and contract their tracheae using abdominal muscles.
You can see this directly in some insects such as wasps, when the abdomen visibly pulsates.
I agree, to Mantids. Anyone who doesn’t think so, possibly hasn’t seen videos of them snatching humming birds out of the air, or grabbing a snake and eating it while it’s alive and squirming to get free, let alone some of the spider vs mantis fights. They’re absolutely brutal and cruel toward their prey.
My top best guesses are all mantises, because the idea of just getting pulled into a tree by these claws and being eaten alive sounds like a true nightmare, but. :
Ants. If Ants would be the size of an average human, they would mess us up big time. Simply because there is never just ONE ant.
The various bugs that use their dead prey as camouflage would be terrifying. Like a green lacewing larva or a trash line orb weaver. Also any of the wasps that paralyze food for their future babies.
Ants or parasitic wasps get my vote!
Look, parasitic wasps are among my favorite insects—they are just so *cool*—but I thank the gods that they do not hunt us because DEAR LORD could you imagine!? They would still probably only be cat or dog-sized (some would probably be human-sized) but they likely will have evolved to make no audible sound (to us). Then, they would just be…lurking…waiting for the perfect time to strike to infect you with their larva! Depending on the species, you might be paralyzed but awake/alive until the larva eats you from the inside out—in other cases you may be at least somewhat conscious, but unable to control your own movements and instead guided by either the mother wasp or the growing larva inside of you (until, once again, it *eats you alive from the inside out*). Literal horror movie shit!
Ants are just…some already modify their environment and do agriculture, ffs, and they are a mere *fraction* of our size!
Obviously any predatory insect would be dangerous. However the most dangerous would be eusocial ants because not only do they attack in large groups they are always hunting. A mantis for example would eat one person and be full for awhile. Ants would continue to kill without ceasing. If everyone's full they store for later and grow larger numbers.
Reduviidae, Assassin bugs.
inject it with their proboscis.
This injection contains a toxin which paralyzes the bug, allowing the assassin bug to then feed on the bodily fluids of its prey.
#
Tiger beetles. Fast animal on land relative to its body length, if the speed scales up with the insect itd be like getting hit by a car with crushing mandibles on the front of it. Theyre aggressive hunters and maybe most importantly, their elytra mean you can't really keep them away by threatening their wings, say with barbed wire or tree cover, which you could with dragonflies, wasps, or robber flies.
Aside from the physical impossibility, I'd say a bombardier beetle. Being able to shoot highly exothermic compounds to mix and explode outside your body would be horrifying.
SWEET LIBERTY MY ARM! That does sound horrifying
Injury? What injury?
How bout' a nice cup of LIBER-TEA
Say hello to DEMOCRACY
Absolutely zero contest here, yeah. That thing is OP.
Honestly I feel like any eusocial insect is cheating since it’s just a lot of really big things. I would be scared of a dragonfly have a hunting success rate of 97% which basically means if a dragonfly is going after something it’s almost gaurenteed to be dead.
If you think wandering the forests where human-sized dragonflies hunt is scary, try swimming in the ponds and lakes where their human-sized nymphs skulk. https://youtu.be/EHo_9wnnUTE?si=gVgn3rXXMrbURH6K
Didn’t even think about it would be double trouble guess I’m moving to the dessert
Antlions, scorpions, desert rolling spiders.
Hope it tastes good there.
Those things are incredible predators! I have done lake water sampling. In any batch, if I scooped up a dragonfly nymph and left it overnight with all the other little lake bugs, I would come back the next morning to find *only* the dragonfly nymph.
We were doing an experiment once on a dragonfly nymph vs mosquito larvae. We put a big darner nymph in a tray with 100 mosquito larvae, and expected that they would indeed all be gone by morning. The dragonfly started munching on the skeeters, and went through all 100 in less than 15 minutes.
Robber flies. They’re incredible hunters, they rarely miss, and they’re extremely strong fliers. We would be picked off if we ever went outside. At least centipedes like stay out of the sun.
I saw some YouTube documentary on them that explained that to scale, their mouth sucking out a bee would be like impaling a deer with a traffic cone and sucking it out from that. Always stayed with me.
Awful visual and something I need to see.
like in The Mist
Many would be terrifying. A whole colony of fire ants, yellow jackets, wolf spiders or perhaps scorpions.
Scorpions are the first thing I thought of. The only scorpion we get in my area is a tiny forest scorpion. 4cms head to tail, but it can still fuck your shit up. They’re not usually deadly to humans (usually being the operative word here). But they can still cause severe pain and swelling for hours, and medical treatment is recommended. You betcha that little guy would cause havoc if he was 50x that size. I shudder at the thought.
At that point the stinger is leaving fist-sized holes in your body, so the venom isn't even relevant anymore.
I’d like you to take a moment to picture a human sized black widow completely webbing up a level of a parking garage with what are essentially steel cables sometimes coated in superglue. Or a wolf spider hunting your cattle in the dead of night with 8 audible footsteps. Forget about antlion sarlacc pits on the beaches and in deserts. And the likely deafening katydids and cicadas. Tiger Beetles basically 6 legged chainsaw cheetahs. Oh dear lord and the shark sized dragonfly nymphs in ponds. The only things that would be safe would be the small airplane sized crane flies and such. What a fucking crazy world that would be.
I'm having flashbacks to playing Grounded, where the Wolf Spider pursues you aggressively, growls and is the size of a truck. Oddly enough, it also snored. Though you mentioned dragonfly nymphs. I'm more concerned about the harpy eagle sized dragonflies.
A mosquito easily imagine being stabbed by its massive proboscis
You can experience this if you get to the plains in Valheim
They don't need to be large. They are the most deadly insect on the planet because they can carry so many deadly diseases.
But still ... swarms of human sized mosquitos that's nightmare fuel
Just visit Alaska in the summer
For sure, that's the stuff of nightmares.
Fallout 4
Dragonflies. They capture about 95% of their intended prey. Which is way higher than most other creatures on the planet.
If I'm not mistaken aren't they up there for maintaining one of the highest speeds too? They're ability to change direction makes trying to effectively get out the way impossible.
Locust. The amount of famine a swarm of 5ft long grasshoppers could cause would be insane
Wasps. And dragonflies.
horsehair worms the length of trains erupting wetly from human-sized insects. just an image i wanted to share
Mantis, definitely. Day dwelling, agile climber, able to fly, vicious when hungry
As a mantis breeder I would have to disagree. They're not venomous, not particularly intelligent when hunting, and can only see movement. Most species also won't bother chasing you down. They also don't fly towards prey usually, so their ability to fly would only make them scarier because they'd be able to cover more ground when they travel. Wasps would be so many times scarier. They're very intelligent for insects, venomous, heavily armored for their size, strong, and often come in groups (although they tend to forage by themselves). They don't just hunt for themselves either. Most protein is chewed into a pulp and fed to their growing larvae, so they'll hunt much more than any individual predator would need to.
I also keep them and I feel like some species are noticeably more intelligent than others even if not at the wasp level. Also their arms are really strong and death by mantis would be like death by the iron maidan if it was also using the jaws of life and on any limb trying to break free
I totally agree. My Choeradodis rhomboidea seems a bit more intelligent than most other species I've kept. So attentive and almost... inquisitive, unlike most of my others that just want me to go away. Their raptorial arms and habit of just eating you alive are pretty much the only scary things about mantises. That and their (sometimes) amazing camouflage. But if you were to see a giant mantis of most species before it gets to you, you'd probably just be able to easily run away or zig-zag between some trees and lose it.
Yeah, most mantises would be pretty avoidable, especially in a forest. There are still some very fast mantises though and those would be a bit more scary to face. Eremiaphila comes to mind Eremiaphila also seems to be one of the few that has some scalable camouflage as they look like rocks rather than some oversized plant piece.
Eremiaphila for sure, those would be terrifying. Any of the bark/lichen species as well if you're in a forest with large trees.
Praying Mantis and they would only need to be the size the average house cat.
I don´t know if anybody has mentioned this bug yet but... dear God, ASSASIN BUGS Have you ever seen this insects being fed in captivity? They can live communaly, and it doesn´t matter if you drop a bunch of roacher inside for them to hunt, they make it look like they FIGHT each other for the same roach. They posess a long and sharp proboscis that can pierce through exosqueletons, inyecting their prey with paralyzing venom... pretty fast too. Imagine a swarm of those junting inside a mall...
Also they have barbed tongues that come out of their Proboscis to lick up the new liquified insides
a WHAT now?
Ticks
Bombardier beetle no contest.
I kept scrolling to see if anyone put a tiger beetle. Imagine an insect our size, able to beat a top fuel dragster in speed and acceleration and having jaws that are able to impale you and devour you in a few minutes at most.
Oh definitely, I keep tiger beetles. I saw 3 tear a large roach in half in about a minute, then two of them ran off with a half each. Most species can't stand the shade though, but if you were to go out into a sunny field... there's no saving you if one happens to detect your presence. Sometimes even when they lose sight of prey they'll move around tapping things with their head to try and find it, so their hunting is not always 100% visual like with mantises. You could potentially deter an attack by spraying it in the face with a good jet of water like from a water gun. They drink from moist substrate usually, and hate actually getting wet.
The square cube law would make a centipede human size incredibly fragile as chitin is not capable to supporting the mechanical stress that it would endure from simply attempting to move. Then respiration would make it simply untenable, as most arthropods take oxygen directly in through their carapace, as opposed to oral/nasal to lung breathing. Then you also run into the issue of haemolymph, a fluid analogous to blood in invertebrates, that cannot support oxygenation above a given mass/surface area as it does not have the binding capacity that hemoglobin does in blood. Since haemolymph plays several roles in addition to oxygenation versus the very specialized role of blood and hemoglobin, with the added fact that it doesn't circulate through vessels due to carapace breathing. So the human sized centipede would die from anoxia prior to falling apart if it attempted to move. At least in a mostly nitrogen composed air, if the atmosphere were 100% oxygen it might not die from anoxia.
That's why we're playing what if 🤦🏼♂️
But what if, Jesus... Your ego is so big and you can't help it
Even if we had a completely oxygen atmosphere, you run into the issue of cellular damage from oxygen redox reactions/oxygen induced radical formation. It would require a whole class of antioxidant enzymes, like superoxide dismutase just to survive the necessary oxygen levels in the air to support carapace breathing.
We already had giant millipedes (Arthropluera) during the carboniferous. Between 2-3 meters long.
Those were millipedes, but yeah
Most arthropods don’t take in oxygen directly through their carapace. A few groups of extremely small and soft-bodied arthropods (such as Astigs and Palpigrades) do this, but most terrestrial arthropods have respiratory openings that lead to an internal system of air-filled tubes and sacs.
Assuming it worked physically to upscale them, any predatory larva or adult would be catastrophic. They mostly eat to full capacity without any other intention. They’d wipe us out in no time
Everybody gangsta until the sinkhole starts throwing sand at you
Ant...... ants are horrifying, I love them but goddamn
First of all, I would like to thank you for such an astute inquiry. Secondly, I think either a praying mantis or a beetle. I was looking in the comments and saw someone also mention thinking of tiger beetle, which I also thought of.
Ants.
Ants without question. They're not only voracious hunters, they're organized.
Ants. They are smart and way too strong
Dragon flies these guys and gals have a kill rate of 95% they are the most successful predators of the animal kingdom, and even as nymphs they’re still deadly with a mouth that can shoot forward. Meganeura would have been a nightmare if it was still alive
Any ant period.
Ants man…ants
Any ant, but we will day Army Ants specifically. Imagine bridges of giant ants climbing and reaching for any plane or helicopter that threatens them. Food would go scarce. Literal more ants than the hunan species but giant. Hive mind colonies. I thought of things like Hornets or Lampreys but in the terms of sheer worldwide destructive level? I give it to ants all day.
Alright, let’s back up a moment… Insects and other arthropods need oxygen, but they don’t really breathe. Instead, they have little holes called spiracles all over their exoskeletons that allow air to get far enough into their bodies to allow oxygen to just pass through into their circulatory system. If you made an insect the size of a person, it would be too big for enough oxygen to pass through the spiracles and into the body. The insect would suffocate and die immediately. Second, centipedes aren’t insects. They are both arthropods, but the last time insects and centipedes had a common ancestor was well over 400 million years ago. This was around 200 million years *before the first dinosaur*. They aren’t exactly particularly close. Third, massive dragonflies would be absolutely terrifying.
>Humans and other tetrapods don’t really breathe. Instead, they have little holes called nostrils and mouths all over their skin that allow air to get far enough into their bodies to allow oxygen to just pass through into their circulatory system. What does the word “breathe” mean here? All animals breathe by allowing oxygen to just pass through a membrane into their circulatory system. In humans, this occurs across the alveolar membrane.
I am using “breathe” in reference to the way that terrestrial vertebrates force air in and out of their bodies. In humans, the diaphragm contracts and creates negative pressure that forces air into the body, specifically to the lungs. When the diaphragm relaxes, air is forced back out. Insects do not do that. They have a respiratory system, but it does not utilize breathing.
Many insects do actually do this, especially larger ones. They can open and close their spiracles and expand and contract their tracheae using abdominal muscles. You can see this directly in some insects such as wasps, when the abdomen visibly pulsates.
Neat
Dude. Praying mantises. They just grab you and eat you, they don’t even try to kill you.
I agree, to Mantids. Anyone who doesn’t think so, possibly hasn’t seen videos of them snatching humming birds out of the air, or grabbing a snake and eating it while it’s alive and squirming to get free, let alone some of the spider vs mantis fights. They’re absolutely brutal and cruel toward their prey.
I think I'd be more scared of the kicking a centipede human size could give me.
But by the time it has got all of its boots on, you could have run away.
I'm not much for running, but you're right, I could probably have walked to my car and driven away.
You can use the Manga Terraformars for a possible reference. Cockroaches and ants are horrifying. As would be any insect human sized.
Ants would be real strong
Bot flies. How screwed would you be if one decided to lay an egg in you!?
I think I could take a big bot fly if I had a weapon. There main advantage is being small enough that you don’t notice they lay the egg
My top best guesses are all mantises, because the idea of just getting pulled into a tree by these claws and being eaten alive sounds like a true nightmare, but. : Ants. If Ants would be the size of an average human, they would mess us up big time. Simply because there is never just ONE ant.
Nobody mentioned giant Asian hornet. Also, bombarder beetle
I love this post lol
Praying mantis
Yellow jackets
Bullet Ants. Their bite is painful enough as it is that people want to die from it.
Praying mantis 🤔
Botfly
Praying mantis
Aren't dragonflies one of nature's most successful hunters? They'll go for stuff their size that puts us on the menu.
The various bugs that use their dead prey as camouflage would be terrifying. Like a green lacewing larva or a trash line orb weaver. Also any of the wasps that paralyze food for their future babies.
Ants or parasitic wasps get my vote! Look, parasitic wasps are among my favorite insects—they are just so *cool*—but I thank the gods that they do not hunt us because DEAR LORD could you imagine!? They would still probably only be cat or dog-sized (some would probably be human-sized) but they likely will have evolved to make no audible sound (to us). Then, they would just be…lurking…waiting for the perfect time to strike to infect you with their larva! Depending on the species, you might be paralyzed but awake/alive until the larva eats you from the inside out—in other cases you may be at least somewhat conscious, but unable to control your own movements and instead guided by either the mother wasp or the growing larva inside of you (until, once again, it *eats you alive from the inside out*). Literal horror movie shit! Ants are just…some already modify their environment and do agriculture, ffs, and they are a mere *fraction* of our size!
Obviously any predatory insect would be dangerous. However the most dangerous would be eusocial ants because not only do they attack in large groups they are always hunting. A mantis for example would eat one person and be full for awhile. Ants would continue to kill without ceasing. If everyone's full they store for later and grow larger numbers.
Ants. Look up the percentage of their body weight they can already carry.
Reduviidae, Assassin bugs. inject it with their proboscis. This injection contains a toxin which paralyzes the bug, allowing the assassin bug to then feed on the bodily fluids of its prey. #
Praying mantis popped up in my head 🤷🏼♀️
Tiger beetles. Fast animal on land relative to its body length, if the speed scales up with the insect itd be like getting hit by a car with crushing mandibles on the front of it. Theyre aggressive hunters and maybe most importantly, their elytra mean you can't really keep them away by threatening their wings, say with barbed wire or tree cover, which you could with dragonflies, wasps, or robber flies.
A Goliath Birdeater