Most people visit Mono Lake in California for the Dr. Seuss-esque towers called tufas. But to experience the truly bizarre, look for the scuba diving alkali flies.

A hundred years ago, the peculiar behavior of these insects charmed Mark Twain, who wrote in his travel memoir, “Roughing It,” that you could hold the flies underwater and they’d pop back up, alive and “dry as a patent office report.”

For most insects, water is a death trap. “Flies just do not crawl under water. It’s just a stupid thing to do,” said Michael Dickinson, who studies flies at the California Institute of Technology.

In water, they inevitably become fish bait or can’t escape or emerge too wet to function. But in Mono Lake’s salty waters, the fly species Ephydra hians is an exception.