Pictures

In a brief, Adult gnats are tiny flies that seen on the horizon prior to dawn and dusk and look like dust or clouds or rain, the size of full-grown adult gnats is 6.35 mm (1/4 inch), gnat body is long and slender with thin wings, some gnats have humpbacks, some gnats body have hairs and others have not, body colors include black or dark-brown in common, grey, yellow and green. No-See-Ums and Midges are other common names of gnats.

Now come to details, below is the first full guide for identification of biting gnats and non-biting gnats, how to know the difference and take your precautions.

Actual Size of a Gnat

Images of the real and actual size of gnats as showing how long is a gnat in the real world which make you wonder how much pain caused by such a very tiny bug like a gnat.

Close-up View of Gnats

Images to show Gnat’s mouth parts, eyes, wings, legs, and other body specs.

From the best illustrations that focus the gnat fly size I found this picture:

Gnats Vs Mosquitoes Vs Housefly Vs A stink bug

The colors and Body shape differs slightly from species to another, in the later sections of this guide, a full explanation of the specs and details of each gnat type.

Gnats are generally classified into two categories, the biting gnats or biting midges, and the non-biting gnats

What Do Biting Gnats Look Like?

Those the gnats you must be aware of them and should avoid their areas.

The species of Gnats that Can Bite

Mainly there is two biological insect families that consists of that tiny biting gnats, Ceratopogonidae and Psychodidae.

However, people around the world hate the biting flies and name them many different names, the common colloquial name is Sandflies or Black flies,

they may be of horse flies from the family Tabanidae as in US, also Florida people call it punky or sand gnat or sandflea, or may be of genus Austrosimulium in australia and call it the blackfly, Also insects from subfamily Phlebotominae and Biting midges (Ceratopogonidae) are known as sandflies or no-see-ums.

In the Caribbean, there is locations notorious of sandfly invasions such as Belize and Honduras

Biting Gnats are vectors of many diseases such as sandfly fever, common treatment is bug sprays containing high concentration of DEET.

No-See-Ums

Also known as biting midges and sand flies, they’re found everywhere around the world, attracted to human blood to enrich their eggs and growth otherwise they feed on nectar and prey on other insects.

The main biological family is Ceratopogonidae, subfamilies examples are Culicoides, Leptoconops, Forcipomyia sp, Palpomyiini, and Atrichopogon sp.

Noseeum name is because you can’t see them, or hardly seen, noseeum size is 1–3 mm, color is black, short wings, and long legs.

Culicoides (highland midge)

Biting Gnats from Phlebotominae and Lutzomyia species

Both are from the same family “Psychodidae” and their bites can transmit many of sand fly-borne diseases. feed on blood from humans, cats, dogs, poultry, and horses, and some pigs. Sandflies from species of Phlebotominae and Lutzomyia are about 3 mm in length with hairy yellowish back; hairy body and short wings

Other Types of ceratopogonidae midges

West Coast Blackflies, Austrosimulium species

Horse flies, Biting Gnats of Tabanidae family

Non-Biting Gnats Species

Fungus Gnats are insects from the super-family “Sciaroidea” which consists of more than 16 subfamilies that looks a bit different from one to another. Fungus gnats are pests of crops, household plants pots and pests of mushroom farms but don’t bite human or pets.

Fungus gnats are very tiny that you can hardly identify however, they may be seen in swarms like clouds, also they’re lazy flyers.

Most of fungus gnats are 1 to 7 mm long, slender dark colored body and wings, many females of fungus gnat types are wingless, typical long legs and antennae in most of them.

The below galleries show you how to identify each insect of the fungus gnat families.

List of most common Fungus Gnat species

Fungus Gnats of the Family Cecidomyiidae

Also called gall midges and wood midges, they look super thin fragile minutes flies, size 0.5–3.0 mm, many are less than 1 mm, have long hairy antenna and reduced wings, reduced mouth-parts, most are black in color.

Fungus Gnats of the Family Keroplatidae

They’re the predatory fungus gnats, very small dark gnats with bigger wings and long legs, the larvae are known as “glowworms” in Australia and New Zealand, They’re forest dwellers, live in the damp areas feed on fungi.

Fungus Gnats of the Family Lygistorrhinidae

The long-beaked fungus gnats

Mycetophilidae Fungus Gnats Family

The Commonly known as fungus gnats, actual size pictures show average wings, long legs and antenna on the thin dark brownish body.

Sciaridae Fungus Gnats Family

The most seen dark-winged fungus gnats

The Lake Flies, chironomidae Gnats Family

Also know by other names such as chironomids or non-biting midges, lake flies resembles mosquitoes but they don’t have wing scales and elongated mouth-parts like mosquitos, so that people may call it the blind mosquitoes, lake flies superficially looks like sandflies but don’t bite humans. Identify from the images below,

Eye gnats

The gnats of the family Chloropidae, also have other names including frit flies or grass flies, eye gnat size is minute (1-4mm), eye gnats body looks shiny with many colors including gray, yellow, green, black, or having golden strips, they posses short and soft proboscis (sucking mouthpart) and shortened reduced wings.

Eye gnats are pests of cereals and grasses but don’t bite humans, although they can feed and attracted to fluid secretions from eyes and body fluids of humans and animals, that’s why people call it eye fly.

A lot of shapes for the eye gnat species in the below gallery

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After get bitten, typically, a gnat bite on human skin looks like a small wounds; or tiny simple pinprick; or narrow red spot locally at the site of the bite along with immediate swelling around the center of the bite, wound-like bites of gnats are due to using their mouth parts that look like scissors to cut our skin and suck blood.

Swelling will be seen directly after you feel the bite. if you scratch hard the gnat bite will be infected, thus it may swell larger and contain pus, infected gnat bites looks like a sac filled of pus or water.

Almost gnat species that do bite leave the same bite shape and size, some nats are predacious than others, and thus show more nasty bites, but this is another story, be tuned. Biting gnats Pictures

Gnats don’t leave any mouth-parts after biting like bees do, bees leave its stinger immersed in the skin.

Just look to the images below and compare with the bites your received to know if it was a gnat bite or another insect bite, of course images will not match 100% but at least they will help you identify the looking of knat bites well.

Here’s what do swollen gnat bites look like

Here’s what do infected gnat bites look like

Infection after gnat bites are common, as biting gnat species leave a wound that is prone to microbial invasion, it looks like balloon or blisters which formed due to bacterial infection after gnat bites.

Hidden and Unnoticed Gnat Bites

Gnats are smaller that they can bite and hide, you can’t know what bit your skin, some gnats on the rear side resembles mosquito bites, some bites on the legs looks like fleas bites, you need a good attention next time to notice the tiny fliers that bite and don’t see them. Look like small patches of blood due to opening of the skin by the gnats mouth.

Gnat Bites on Equine Skin

Biting gnats can bite human and livestock animals as well, however, stable gnats can do dangerous wounds after biting, thus they cause harmful anemia to the equine and other farm animals like cows and broilers.

Conclusion:

If you feel a sharp painful sting on scruff of your neck; around ears; on exposed arm or leg, and the feeling sounds like a sharp cut of a razor blade, it’s a gnat bite. so that, identifying such small flyer depends on both the shape of its bite and the strong feeling, thus you can differentiate gnat bites from other insect bites.