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2:06pm August 4, 2015

deucebasket:

I saw a bunch of ants carrying around a potato chip this morning and it made me wish I had a bunch of friends and a really huge potato chip

2:13am June 20, 2015

libutron:

Lichen Katydid - Markia hystrix

Katydids comprise a diverse group of insects particularly well adapted to survival in rainforest because of their exceptional camouflage. Most katydids are well camouflaged with brown or leaflike green markings. 

The Lichen Katydid, Markia hystrix (Orthoptera - Tettigoniidae), however, has one of the most incredible camouflages of all. It resembles the pale greenish-white lichens on which it lives in rainforest treetops. Not only does the color match the lichens, but the body and legs have a bizarre assortment of spines and points that blend well with lichens, in fact, so well that this insect is extremely difficult for predator to find.

This astonishing insect is known to occur in Central America (Costa Rica, Panama), Colombia and Ecuador.

References: [1] - [2]

Photo credits: [Top: ©Holguer Lopez | Locality: not indicated, 2013] - [Bottom: ©Robert Oelman | Locality: Colombia-Ecuador, 2007]

7:00am June 17, 2015
By dierk schaefer (Flickr: [1]) [CC BY 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons[Image description:  Five butterflies, four of them much larger than the fifth, eating an orange and other fruit at a butterfly exhibit in Germany.]Please don’t remove the image description, it is intended to let visually impaired people and other screenreader users know what is happening in the photo.

By dierk schaefer (Flickr: [1]) [CC BY 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

[Image description:  Five butterflies, four of them much larger than the fifth, eating an orange and other fruit at a butterfly exhibit in Germany.]

Please don’t remove the image description, it is intended to let visually impaired people and other screenreader users know what is happening in the photo.

6:52am June 17, 2015
“Nacimiento de una Dryas iulia, Mariposario de Icod de los Vinos, Tenerife, España, 2012-12-13, DD 03” by Diego Delso. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons[Image description:  Photograph of a dryas iulia butterfly ecloding – emerging from its chrysalis.  It is upside-down and its pinkish-red wings look like pieces of cloth.]Please don’t delete the image description, it’s there for visually impaired people and other screenreader users.More about this type of butterfly, from Wikipedia:Dryas iulia (often incorrectly spelled julia),[1] commonly called the Julia Butterfly, Julia Heliconian, The Flame, or Flambeau, is a species of brush-footed butterfly. The sole representative of its genus Dryas, it is native from Brazil to southern Texas and Florida, and in summer can sometimes be found as far north as eastern Nebraska. Over 15 subspecies have been described.Its wingspan ranges from 82 to 92 mm, and it is colored orange (brighter in male specimens) with black markings; this species is somewhat unpalatable to birds and belongs to the “orange” Batesian Mimicry mimic complex.[2]This butterfly is a fast flier and frequents clearings, paths, and margins of forests and woodlands. It feeds on the nectar of flowers, such as lantanas (Lantana) and Shepherd’s-needle (Scandix pecten-veneris), and the tears of caiman, the eye of which the butterfly irritates to produce tears.[3] Its caterpillar feeds on leaves of passion vines including Passiflora affinis and Yellow Passionflower (P. lutea) in Texas.The species is popular in butterfly houses because it is long-lived and active throughout the day.

“Nacimiento de una Dryas iulia, Mariposario de Icod de los Vinos, Tenerife, España, 2012-12-13, DD 03” by Diego Delso. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

[Image description:  Photograph of a dryas iulia butterfly ecloding – emerging from its chrysalis.  It is upside-down and its pinkish-red wings look like pieces of cloth.]

Please don’t delete the image description, it’s there for visually impaired people and other screenreader users.

More about this type of butterfly, from Wikipedia:

Dryas iulia (often incorrectly spelled julia),[1] commonly called the Julia Butterfly, Julia Heliconian, The Flame, or Flambeau, is a species of brush-footed butterfly. The sole representative of its genus Dryas, it is native from Brazil to southern Texas and Florida, and in summer can sometimes be found as far north as eastern Nebraska. Over 15 subspecies have been described.

Its wingspan ranges from 82 to 92 mm, and it is colored orange (brighter in male specimens) with black markings; this species is somewhat unpalatable to birds and belongs to the “orange” Batesian Mimicry mimic complex.[2]

This butterfly is a fast flier and frequents clearings, paths, and margins of forests and woodlands. It feeds on the nectar of flowers, such as lantanas (Lantana) and Shepherd’s-needle (Scandix pecten-veneris), and the tears of caiman, the eye of which the butterfly irritates to produce tears.[3] Its caterpillar feeds on leaves of passion vines including Passiflora affinis and Yellow Passionflower (P. lutea) in Texas.

The species is popular in butterfly houses because it is long-lived and active throughout the day.

7:18pm April 20, 2015
shadowpeoplearejerks: lucymiddletonrogers: archiving-a-life: neonclues: h e lp me I can’t remember exactly where I heard about “telling the bees” but it has stuck in my head forever. This is adorable.  I heard of it somewhere too, but can’t remember where at all.

shadowpeoplearejerks:

lucymiddletonrogers:

archiving-a-life:

neonclues:

h e lp me

I can’t remember exactly where I heard about “telling the bees” but it has stuck in my head forever.

This is adorable. 

I heard of it somewhere too, but can’t remember where at all.

8:58pm October 6, 2014

sxxphia:

Guys

12:59am October 4, 2014
mommapolitico: badscienceshenanigans: tony-the-intelligent-goon: ashiibaka: Science. I can’t tell what my favorite part is, but it’s either scientists wasting budget and time to see if ants count their steps the idea to put ants on stilts there had to be a guy who made ant stilts and put them on the ants confused ants OMG this isn’t even the beginning of what scientists have done to ants. Gather round bbs while I tell you some stories.There was one entomologist down the hall when I was in undergrad who wanted to figure out what goes down in the habitat when new species of ants appear. So naturally the solution was to take a bunch of colonies (conveniently housed in tupperware containers), give them names like Moria and Mordor, and set them all up in an “arena” with food. There were notebooks full of lines like “2:36pm Two Mordor ants attack Moria ant” “2:37 pm Moria ants send reinforcements; first ant sent alarm call?” scattered all over the table because they managed to convince undergrads that sitting around taking handwritten notes on what ants are doing today was good science experience (partially because it’s true).Now in the entomology dept at my current uni there’s an entomologist who studies ants and one who studies termites and they’re married to each other and they’re adorable. Also back in grad school they liked to take extra leftover colonies of their research bugs and make them fight. The ants always won. But the BEST is this guy at our local USDA research station who’s working on parasitoids for fire ants. So you know how there are wasps that lay their eggs in caterpillars and eat them from the inside? bitches that is only the BEGINNING of what Mother Nature has in store for insects. There are flies that lay their eggs on fire ants. The larvae hatches out and burrows into the fire ant’s head and eats the insides and straight-up turns the ant into a behavior-controlled zombie. Right before it’s ready to pupate, it pops the ant’s head clean off. And then when it’s done pupating it crawls out between the ant’s jaws. It’s AWESOME.Now the thing is before you can release these parasitoid flies into the wild, you have to raise a bunch of them in the lab. That turns out to be really tricky because fire ants FREAK OUT when they hear the flies coming. They all run and hide in their nest like a bunch of losers. That means the scientists have to find some way to get the fire ants out of their nests so the mama flies can get some victims to lay eggs on.The scientists came up with the perfect solution. They figured out that the only thing that can motivate fire ants to run around when there are phorid flies around is the need to SAVE THE BABIES! So what they do is take both adult ants and a nice big scoop of brood (the part of the nest that has all the baby ants in it) and stick them all in this tray. Over this tray there’s some homemade mechanical gearing that controls two shelters. They switch between being down flat on the surface where ants can hide under them, and being picked up and exposing all the ants underneath. Every five minutes it alternates which one is up or down. Whenever it switches the fire ants zoom around frantically trying to run the babies to the other shelter that’s now down, and while they’re doing that MUHAHAHAHAAAA IT’S EGG-LAYING TIME for the flies. And when I say “shelters” I mean “Solo cups” because this is college, folks.Anyway, watching this thing at work is 75% soul-deep satisfying because if you’ve lived with fire ants in their ecologically-uncontrolled plague state you know what I’m talking about; and 25% utterly horrifying. Also it makes me glad to not live in medieval times because there was no such thing as entomology back then and people with that kind of imagination would have had to find other ways to use it.  Ants. Stilts. Gotta love it.

mommapolitico:

badscienceshenanigans:

tony-the-intelligent-goon:

ashiibaka:

Science.

I can’t tell what my favorite part is, but it’s either

  • scientists wasting budget and time to see if ants count their steps
  • the idea to put ants on stilts
  • there had to be a guy who made ant stilts and put them on the ants
  • confused ants

OMG this isn’t even the beginning of what scientists have done to ants. Gather round bbs while I tell you some stories.

There was one entomologist down the hall when I was in undergrad who wanted to figure out what goes down in the habitat when new species of ants appear. 

So naturally the solution was to take a bunch of colonies (conveniently housed in tupperware containers), give them names like Moria and Mordor, and set them all up in an “arena” with food. There were notebooks full of lines like “2:36pm Two Mordor ants attack Moria ant” “2:37 pm Moria ants send reinforcements; first ant sent alarm call?” scattered all over the table because they managed to convince undergrads that sitting around taking handwritten notes on what ants are doing today was good science experience (partially because it’s true).

Now in the entomology dept at my current uni there’s an entomologist who studies ants and one who studies termites and they’re married to each other and they’re adorable. Also back in grad school they liked to take extra leftover colonies of their research bugs and make them fight. The ants always won. 

But the BEST is this guy at our local USDA research station who’s working on parasitoids for fire ants. 

So you know how there are wasps that lay their eggs in caterpillars and eat them from the inside? bitches that is only the BEGINNING of what Mother Nature has in store for insects. 

There are flies that lay their eggs on fire ants. The larvae hatches out and burrows into the fire ant’s head and eats the insides and straight-up turns the ant into a behavior-controlled zombie. Right before it’s ready to pupate, it pops the ant’s head clean off. And then when it’s done pupating it crawls out between the ant’s jaws. It’s AWESOME.

Now the thing is before you can release these parasitoid flies into the wild, you have to raise a bunch of them in the lab. That turns out to be really tricky because fire ants FREAK OUT when they hear the flies coming. They all run and hide in their nest like a bunch of losers. That means the scientists have to find some way to get the fire ants out of their nests so the mama flies can get some victims to lay eggs on.

The scientists came up with the perfect solution. They figured out that the only thing that can motivate fire ants to run around when there are phorid flies around is the need to SAVE THE BABIES! 

So what they do is take both adult ants and a nice big scoop of brood (the part of the nest that has all the baby ants in it) and stick them all in this tray. Over this tray there’s some homemade mechanical gearing that controls two shelters. They switch between being down flat on the surface where ants can hide under them, and being picked up and exposing all the ants underneath. Every five minutes it alternates which one is up or down. Whenever it switches the fire ants zoom around frantically trying to run the babies to the other shelter that’s now down, and while they’re doing that MUHAHAHAHAAAA IT’S EGG-LAYING TIME for the flies. 

And when I say “shelters” I mean “Solo cups” because this is college, folks.

Anyway, watching this thing at work is 75% soul-deep satisfying because if you’ve lived with fire ants in their ecologically-uncontrolled plague state you know what I’m talking about; and 25% utterly horrifying. Also it makes me glad to not live in medieval times because there was no such thing as entomology back then and people with that kind of imagination would have had to find other ways to use it. 

Ants. Stilts. Gotta love it.

3:53pm September 21, 2014
forestrees: §¤§

forestrees:

§¤§

4:33am September 6, 2014

lunar-lavender:

chaserofstarlight:

ellingtonmoose:

landofrhymeandreason:

The Rosy Maple Moth is the prettiest moth ever.

(I do not own the rights to these photos, I just wanted to share this beautiful moth with tumblr.)

chaserofstarlight

EEEEEE

EEEEEEEEEEEE

8:07pm August 19, 2014
jack-flanders: sadfrick: fuckyeahtattoos: Bee and Lavender done by Luci at Tatouage Royal in Montreal.  plan on gttin a tattoo not exactly like this but similar kindda isabelknight

jack-flanders:

sadfrick:

fuckyeahtattoos:

Bee and Lavender done by Luci at Tatouage Royal in Montreal. 

plan on gttin a tattoo not exactly like this but similar kindda

isabelknight

11:48am August 18, 2014
wtfevolution: “Hey, evolution, you seem like you’re feeling better. That’s a pretty red bug you’re making there.” "Oh, thanks. It’s a flatid leaf bug.” “I like the shape. And that’s a lovely shade of red.” “I picked it myself.” “That’s a weird fuzzy branch it’s crawling on, though, huh?” “What? No. Those are the babies.” “I’m sorry?” “Babies. Dozens of creepy, squirmy, waxy, fringy babies.” "… you are so weird.” Source: Flickr / christophandre / licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 (exposure adjusted from original)

wtfevolution:

“Hey, evolution, you seem like you’re feeling better. That’s a pretty red bug you’re making there.”

"Oh, thanks. It’s a flatid leaf bug.”

“I like the shape. And that’s a lovely shade of red.”

“I picked it myself.”

“That’s a weird fuzzy branch it’s crawling on, though, huh?”

“What? No. Those are the babies.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Babies. Dozens of creepy, squirmy, waxy, fringy babies.”

"… you are so weird.”

Source: Flickr / christophandre / licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 (exposure adjusted from original)

4:06am August 17, 2014
rhamphotheca: The incredible honey hunters of the Himalayan foothills by Bec Crew Twice a year, locals in central Nepal risk their lives high up in the Himalayan foothills to harvest honey produced by the world’s largest honeybee. Growing up to 3 cm (1.2 in) in length, the Himalayan cliff honey bee of Nepal is the world’s largest honeybee.  Found only in the foothills of the Himalayas, building their homes at altitudes of between 2,500 and 3,000 m (8,200 and 9,800 ft) and foraging as high up as 4,100 m (13,500 ft) above the ground, these insects have a unique ability to thrive at incredible heights. The Himalayan cliff honey bee is the only species in the world to produce a type of honey called red spring honey, and it cannot be reproduced by commerical beekeepers due to the high altitudes that give it its unique properties. Said to be “intoxicating and relaxing”, red spring honey is understandably very valuable, and twice a year, honey hunters from the Gurung population of Nepal risk their lives to harvest it up in the foothills… (read more: Science Alert! - Australia and New Zealand) photo by Andrew Newey

rhamphotheca:

The incredible honey hunters of the Himalayan foothills

by Bec Crew

Twice a year, locals in central Nepal risk their lives high up in the Himalayan foothills to harvest honey produced by the world’s largest honeybee.

Growing up to 3 cm (1.2 in) in length, the Himalayan cliff honey bee of Nepal is the world’s largest honeybee. 

Found only in the foothills of the Himalayas, building their homes at altitudes of between 2,500 and 3,000 m (8,200 and 9,800 ft) and foraging as high up as 4,100 m (13,500 ft) above the ground, these insects have a unique ability to thrive at incredible heights.

The Himalayan cliff honey bee is the only species in the world to produce a type of honey called red spring honey, and it cannot be reproduced by commerical beekeepers due to the high altitudes that give it its unique properties. Said to be “intoxicating and relaxing”, red spring honey is understandably very valuable, and twice a year, honey hunters from the Gurung population of Nepal risk their lives to harvest it up in the foothills…

(read more: Science Alert! - Australia and New Zealand)

photo by Andrew Newey

4:42am July 29, 2014
nipplebutt: basedgosh: a national hero look at his little shoes

nipplebutt:

basedgosh:

a national hero

look at his little shoes

8:24pm July 24, 2014

fruityplant:

nomnomnom! hungry banana slug devouring a leaf.