Sabethes cyaneus


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An awesome blog post about PREDATORY SNAILS politely tapping LANTERN BUGS for honeydew and calcium, and then being mugged by ANTS for the honeydew before they can drink it. This is possibly the most awesome bit of insect-farming and kleptoparasitism I've seen in EVER.

And the photos are just gorgeous!

A Rather Interesting article on the insane adaptations achieved by the Trichogrammatids

"Thrips are tiny insects, typically just a millimetre in length. Some are barely half that size. If that’s how big the adults are, imagine how small a thrips’ egg must be. Now, consider that there are insects that lay their eggs inside the egg of a thrips."

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Good news for insect fans - the Caustic Soda podcast has done a second instalment about insects. This time, True Bugs.

"Assassin bugs, Chaga's disease, bat bugs and water bugs that take down reptiles, amphibians, birds and mammals are all on topic! Plus: The Lesser of Two Evils - would you rather spend a few years in an Uzbekistan bug pit or ( Read more... )

Not so much at work, as at the Xmas dinner arranged by my employers. One of the chilli mussels I was enjoying turned out to be unexpected crunchy, and what I had expected to be a fragment of mussel shell turned out to a crab, either a Zaops ( oyster crab ) or the closely related Pea Crab, genus Pinnotheres. Both genera used to be Pinnotheres, but ( Read more... )

Found this article thru Daily Kos, but it has naught to do with politics.

Instead, it's about chitons, an ocean species whose eyes are formed from limestone.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2011/04/14/chitons-see-with-eyes-made-of-rock/

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To bring us further away from the current flood of mass bird kill reports, some spider porn

via Skepchick , Susan Mulius' report on Johnathan Pruitt's research into sex play among teenaged Anelosimus studiosus

When pairs of young comb-footed spiders engage in an arachnid version of heavy petting, the males gain experience that appears to pay off ( Read more... )

Ranging widely in size & shape, and occasionally resembling someone you might know..


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Here is an example of circular milling:

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A circle of army ants, each one following the ant in front, becomes locked into a circular mill. They will continue to circle each other until they all die. How crazy is that? Sometimes they escape, though. Beebe (1921) described a circular mill he witnessed in Guyana. It measured 1200 feet in ( Read more... )