#insects

[toadbreath]

forgor his pants. how embarrassing

[expressions-of-nature]

by hitoshirezu

[onenicebugperday]

@fifty-two-hertz-blue submitted: no id needed! just wanted to submit this pretty, wonderfully chunky lime hawk moth! found them a week ago!

I am in love w her :’)

[mindblowingscience]

Even bugs as small as woodlice can disperse seeds they eat, setting a new record for smallest animal recorded to do so. The Kobe University discovery underscores the crucial yet often overlooked role that small invertebrates play in ecosystems. Many plants offer fruit to animals so that they also eat the seeds and deposit them at a farther-off place after they have passed through the animal's digestive tract. For this to work smoothly, plant seeds need to be findable by and attractive to the potential disseminator, robust enough to not be damaged in the process, and small and smooth enough to actually pass through.

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[ex0skeletal-undead]

Hercules Zombie by neongreen

[have-you-seen-this-animal]

[comparativetarot]

Air Elemental. Art by Amélia Leonards, from the 78 Tarot 10th Anniversary Deck.

[owormy]

more bugs from my travels... two very fashionable red-and-black froghoppers

[world-in-progressish]

Wool-bearing larva and shepherd. These larva graze on grasses, moss and lichen. Their coarse wooly fibers can be harvested each time the larva sheds its skin to grow. The ancestors of these insects would molt and pupate on a yearly cycle, but shepherds care for them through winters to artificially extend the larval stage for year-round fiber harvests. When it is around three summers old it has a final, especially abundant molt with prized finely textured fibers, then it forms a hard chrysalis. It will overwinter in this state until the following spring, where it emerges as an adult to reproduce.

Shepherds store the chrysalises in cool, dry earth cellars for protection; the insects inside are essentially in stasis and can be harvested for meat throughout the winter with no worry about spoilage. After the first thaw, the fittest pupae are chosen to be that spring’s breeding stock, and the rest are culled and enjoyed as part of a seasonal feast.

[discourse-slenderman]

M!anons yoy into a bumble Bee for two hours?

oh, that makes sense..

..wait a damn—

…

*buzzing sound*

[bonefall]

I like that Waspstar's name has some symbolism to it! Real wasps having a reputation of stinging without reason or being aggressive, when in reality they're normally just protecting their hives..

Oooo, thanks for pointing out, that's delicious.

Most of the time, Canon!Waspwhisker has blue eyes since he's a gray and white cat... but none of his kits have blue eyes anyway, and there's too many cats with this color scheme anyway.

So maybe I'll make BB!Waspwhisker have BRIGHT yellow eyes, just like a yellowjacket. I'll even make the gray patch on xeir head resemble the T-shape that a common wasp has. This mark helps distinguish a more "aggressive" common wasp from the passive (but larger) german wasp

Xey're not trying to hurt you, so don't try to hurt xem. Come openly, speak calmly, perhaps make a small offering of meat and sweets and you'll see no problems.

CW: BUG FACE. Insect. Close-up head of a wasp.

[ID: A common wasp. From top down, its head is striped black, then yellow, then a black stripe connects its antennae and dips downward into a T. A final black stripe defines its mandible and "lips."]

Funfact; the common wasp is rare in the US, but the German wasp has been widely introduced. If the yellowjackets seem "smaller" in the UK, that's probably because you're looking at a common wasp!

[diana-andraste]

Insect Family Surrealism, Bohumil Stepán, 1975

[onenicebugperday]

@death-by-moth submitted: Found this beautiful mantis a couple of years ago in Lansing, Michigan!

A really beautiful Chinese mantis!

[mindblowingscience]

Bats, as the main predator of night-flying insects, create a selective pressure that has led many of their prey to evolve an early warning system of sorts: ears uniquely tuned to high-frequency bat echolocation. To date, scientists have found at least six orders of insects—including moths, beetles, crickets and grasshoppers—that have evolved ears capable of detecting ultrasound. But tiger beetles take things a step further. When they hear a bat nearby, they respond with their own ultrasonic signal, and for the past 30 years, no one has known why.

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[53v3nfrn5]

[davidtennantpussytulpa]

IN SHAMBLES OVER THIS