Milionia basalis (Geometridae) is a species of butterfly found in Japan, N.E. Himalaya, Burma and Sundaland, which occurs in a number of distinct races. The brilliant colored M. basalis pyrozona has been recorded in Peninsular Malaysia and Burma.
Q:When I was a child, I saw something that changed my mind about wasps forever. My dad was doing some cabin construction work and I was hanging out at the site. Some other guy had half-crushed a wasp with a hammer, but it was still alive. As I watched, a second wasp flew to its side, and stroked it -actually stroked it, with what I can I can only describe as tenderness - with its antennae until the injured wasp stopped moving and died. Then the second wasp flew away, and I did not see it again.
She was probably trying to communicate with her sister, probably trying to tell her to come back to the nest or share information about the area, and was very confused by the distorted responses she was getting, likely mixed with scent-based distress signals.
When the responses stopped, she probably went home and told the others to be on alert for danger :(
I’m not anthropomorphizing a bit here. Social wasps groom one another, share a LOT of information, get stressed when separated
from their close relatives, and they recognize one another visually, like we humans do, by the fact that every single one has a unique face, even in the same “hive:”
I almost feel bad for my seemingly irreparable phobia of them now.
Mantidflies are insects in the family Mantispidae. They are small to moderate-sized insects in the order Neuroptera. [1] There are many genera with around 400 species worldwide, especially in the tropics and subtropics. [2] Only 5 species of Mantispa occur in Europe.
Mantispids are fascinating because they look like a cross between a mantis and a vespid wasp while being directly related to neither.
a genetic mutation known as erythrism, which suppresses the black pigment eumelanin and produces an excess of the red pigment phaeomelanin, causes these grasshoppers to turn a dangerously conspicuous pink (making rare the photographer who manages to photograph one). the combination of red hair and freckles in humans is thought to be a form of erythrism. photos by roeselien raimond, victoria hillman, marcus juvonen, tim parkinson,
(I do not own the rights to these photos, I just wanted to share this beautiful moth with tumblr.)
OMG one of these landed on me once to warm up and it was the most beautiful thing ever. I’d never seen one before and I’ve never seen one since but they are my favorite moth of all time!!! It’s a very important memory for me.
Not unlike birds’ habit of anting, lemurs will annoy certain species of millipedes into deploying their defensive secretions. We’re not entirely positive the lemurs enjoy getting fucked up on the toxins; it may just be a relatively low-cost side-effect of reducing their parasite load. Also like birds, captive lemurs have been observed substituting cigarette butts for insect-based repellants.
Weezbo assembled a fantastic collection of macro photos taken by Indonesian photographer Nordin Seruyan (previously featured here) in his back garden in Borneo, Indonesia. His backyard appears to be a veritable wonderland of beautiful mantises, dragonflies, caterpillars, moths, grasshoppers, ladybugs and other insects.
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