Skimming the surface
THEY live where air and water meet. Appearing on stream, pool, lake and slow-moving river, where they scavenge the bodies of the dying and the dead, they are the neuston, a category of insect classified in 1917 by Swedish limnologist Einar Naumann. Their appearance and features—let alone their name—might suggest mysterious aliens in a science-fiction television series, but they are both real and truly remarkable.
In their most familiar form, we know them as water skaters, water skimmers, water striders, water skippers or pond skaters; in southern states of may be, but the common water skater conquers the laws of Nature. It does this by growing thousands of tiny, grooved, wax-covered hairs that prevent the ingress of water, an attribute described by science as epipleustonic.
