The nymphal stages of members of this assassin bug genus (referred to generally as “Masked Hunters”) exude a sticky substance that covers their entire body, including the antennae and legs, to which their environment (dirt, frass, plant fragments, etc) adheres to, effectively rendering them invisible. This affords them protection against predation, and allows them to function as ambush predators themselves.
In the top image, the nymph was a resident of a termite and borer infested tree stump, so carries a livery of sawdust and wood fragments. The bottom image shows another individual with a soil- and leaf litter-based coating. With the final moult into adulthood and the addition of wings for mobility, the assassin loses its cryptic capabilities and assumes a more conventional appearance.
This is a hilarious AF story about how the USPS once lost a box of my bugs and had extreme regrets. If you are bug phobic, this is your warning. There’s no photos of the bugs, just the poor mangled box.
Lets begin! Some of you probably remember earlier this year I lost a shipment of dubias. Since I was busy working with the seller on what the heck to do about that I forgot to ever post the full story. It’s great, I promise.
In Jan I ordered a shipment of dubias like usual, and it’s normally only 2 days to get here. By the 4th day in the mail I’m wondering what is the hold up, but also figure hey, holiday rush is still on, no biggie. Now, these only have to go from Kansas to Oklahoma, so when I pull up the tracking info I’m surprised to find they detoured to Cali. No biggie they’ll be a little late until the box totally disappeared.
There was suddenly no tracking info available for this package, it vanished into the postal system along with my 200 dubia. After a week of live bugs being in the mail I’ve given them up as unlikely to arrive alive. By the 2nd week I’ve accepted they are never coming home. This is where I am wrong.
I get a mystery package, not that unusual honestly. But the damaged notice? Now that was odd indeed! Opening the box was pretty crazy too:
Weird a garbage bag? WAIT A FAMILIAR GREEN STICKER!
By George it’s those lost dubia, poor bastards. Now at this point I should have known something was up, I mean why bags? Why 2 bags? But the only thing I can do is sit here and look at this poor destroyed box.
THOROUGHLY destroyed might I add. Also very slightly soggy? It was raining in Cali at the time it was there though, this makes some sense. Likely got left out somewhere. But wow it sure got a number done to it!
Now I’ll have to make a note here, the company I buy from does 2 things that are highly relevant here. Firstly, they send a small deli cup of food for your bugs with every shipment. Secondly, they also put a smaller box inside the larger one that contains the bugs.
Dubia food: busted open and missing. Inner box: OPEN. Bugs: ALIVE but half are missing
SUDDENLY THE BAGS MAKE SENSE. SUDDENLY I REALIZE SOMEWHERE A POSTAL WORKER HAD A BOX LEAKING DUBIAS ALL OVER THEIR POST. I LAUGHED SO HARD I CRIED.
Caddisfly larvau build protective cases using materials found in their environment. Artist Hubert Duprat supplied them with gold leaf and precious stones. This is what they created.
(don’t worry, the other one is fine, beetles are real tough and they do this sort of thing in the wild all the time. Only, in the wild, loser pretty often falls out of a tree.)
whoa. Buggy, you gotta see this. bugs and robots together!!!
The following is an excerpt from the artist’s deviantART page bio:
My aim is to show the beauty of the mechanical world, a place generally hidden from the public behind metal and glass. My pieces display the more delicate and ephemeral side of gears, rather than the cold, hard factory feel they normally portray. Please contact me at jmg@amechanicalmind.com or jmg.amechanicalmind@gmail.com with any questions you may have.
It’s a Ben, also that looks like it might be hurting it ,do not grab the snoot.
yeah I’m just going to go trim some weeds with my new Weed Whacker ™
For those feeling bad for the beetle I highly doubt holding onto the horn is causing it serious harm or stress. They are pretty clumsy fliers and will head-on body slam into obstacles at top speed. It would probably hurt itself worse if allowed to fly freely. They also use their horns for combat with other males, sometimes locking together, so something holding the horn is not so different from what it would experience in nature.
I mean the beetle probably doesn’t LOVE it but it’s not ruining his day either.
Hercules beetles are such adorable goofs.
They have really strong bodies, and the snoot is stiff and made of exoskeleton material. This is the best way to show it off in ‘flight’ without trying to film it careening around a room, and that definitely won’t hurt it. The legs out aren’t a sign of distress, that’s just how they fly.
Substances don’t have to be a liquid or a gas to behave like a fluid. Swarms of fire ants display viscoelastic properties, meaning they can act like both a liquid and a solid. Like a spring, a ball of fire ants is elastic, bouncing back after being squished (top image). But the group can also act like a viscous liquid. A ball of ants can flow and diffuse outward (middle image). The ants are excellent at linking with one another, which allows them to survive floods by forming rafts and to escape containers by building towers.
Researchers found the key characteristic is that ants will only maintain links with nearby ants as long as they themselves experience no more than 3 times their own weight in load. In practice, the ants can easily withstand 100 times that load without injury, but that lower threshold describes the transition point between ants as a solid and ants as a fluid. If an ant in a structure is loaded with more force, he’ll let go of his neighbors and start moving around.
When they’re linked, the fire ants are close enough together to be water-repellent. Even if an ant raft gets submerged (bottom image), the space between ants is small enough that water can’t get in and the air around them can’t get out. This coats the submerged ants in their own little bubble, which the ants use to breathe while they float out a flood. For more, check out the video below and the full (fun and readable!) research paper linked in the credits. (Video and image credits: Vox/Georgia Tech; research credit: S. Phonekeo et al., pdf; submitted by Joyce S., Rebecca S., and possibly others)
At last! My tiny fluffy teddy bear moths have arrived!
My first southern flannel moth adult emerged from his cocoon this morning. You may remember my previous posts of them: as caterpillars, they are the most adorable fluffy shy hairballs who are also so venomous their stings are considered the most painful kind you can get in North America.
They were so cute and I wanted to hold them SO BAD but the closest I could get was stroking the side of the tank while I wept over how life was so cruel to deny me the joy of holding these sweet babies.
Well, my first sweet baby is here. A boy: his antennae are feathered to detect the scent females let out to attract mates. I knew they were small, but I was still surprised to see this tiny baby. Every surface is covered in fluffy fur.
His little black boots. His fluffy bum. His orange mustache 😭
I’m not going to lie. I kissed him. He is perfect.
BettSplendens Tumblr Evac 