#larvae life

[futurebird]

All your life you have lived in a small dark room. But it's OK. There is a huge Meal(tm) for you you eat in the room. So you enjoy your meal and time passes, and you grow-- then one day, when there is no more Meal(tm) to eat, you feel a sleepiness coming over you-- you drift into the longest and strangest sleep of your life.

When you wake up-- everything feels different, your body is different. You have wings! And-- God! You can't stand the little room anymore! Get out! You must fly!

You emerge from the clay chamber made with love by your long dead mother. The light of a early summer day hits your newly minted compound eyes for the first time! The world is vast and full of danger and things to eat! You think it would be a wonderful idea, to find a delicious Meal(tm) and make a little cosy chamber for that Meal(tm) and then place an egg there so that a little one, one like you could enjoy such an excellent start to life.

But first! BOYS!

Oh to be a hymenopteran!

[heartnosekid]

rainbow tripod fish larva (bathypterois grallator) | source

[yellosnacc]

Uniima larvae come in large numbers but high mortality rate as these onigiri have to compete to become juveniles even in the egg case.

They start off with an egg wall. Their bodies are still clumbs of cells that slowly fill up the inside of the 'egg', consuming the included nutrients. Once they are ready, the baby grows it's own wall for the first time and 'hatches'.

After this the larvae molts as it grows with a new wall each time. During the whole larval period the shed skin sticks to the white. If adults don't clean them up, you will see multiple torn layers on top of the white, which can cause issues.

The white grows a straw. A somewhat brittle organ compared to that of ancestral larvae but functional enough to pierce under another whites wall (especially in the side seam). The larva actively feeds itself using this, though the food has to be liquid enough to get through the straw. They don't smell or see to search for food and will just wiggle the straw around until they can slurp. These triangles are mostly fat and liquids with other tissues in the center and thowards straw.

When they completely lose the straw (the entrance to it reforms), they start eating with their new mouth. At this point they also start making noise with their nostrils. Adult Uniima are sensitive to this much more than to the visual cuteness of the larva. This is often when adults start claming individuals to raise.

As the creature grows and gains complexity inside its own wall, it's new molts allow for use of more developed parts - anal cavity opens, ear cycles appear, eyes get bigger and closer to the wall surface, "mouth hands" with leathery pads emerge.. and lastly it's whole legs with fingers (often just silhouettes of feet show up rather then whole fingers or they are webbed).

After it's last stage and sufficient amounts of food, the white goes dormant to metamorphosise. This can take a week and less as most juvenile components are already in place.

The larval stages of Uniima can differ in length depending of environment - temperature, humidity, lack of food...

The average time from birth to metamorphosis is around 3 and half earth months.

The images here are not fully up to scale. Most larvae grow more between the stages but it's also not impossible for it to be to scale. I would just consider this larva a runt of the litter.

[strawlessandbraless]

Tripodfish, Discoverichthys praecox larva Appreciation Post!! 🩵 💙 🌊

Rare Tripodfish larva, an Ipnopidae species, found on a blackwater dive off Kona, Hawaii. Body size about 3.5cm

📷 credit: Steven Kovacs

You love to sea it 🌊

[critter-creature-or-beast]

Submitted for classification by @hyliaphora-cecropia

"What about a fifth-instar cecropia moth caterpillar?"

By Jacktropod at iNaturalist

[onenicebugperday]

22-spot ladybird, Psyllobora vigintiduopunctata, Coccinellidae

Found throughout Europe

Photo 1 by rasmuscool99, 2 by azph, 3 by tivanik, 4 by berzou, 5 by denis_m, 6 by nakarb, 7 by claudekolwelter, 8 (pupae) by esant, and 9-10 (larva) by krylenkosl

[kply-industries]

[unabletomakedecisions]

Fun Facts about Parasitic Worms

Did you know that there are parasitic worms that get into your blood or lymph vessels and stay there? Imagine looking down at the veins in your hand and noticing that one of them is moving. It's shifting and squirming. Oh god, there's something inside there. Get it out, get it out! But you can't. There's no way to do it without cutting open your vessels, and you really don't want to do that. So you need to wait. Wait until the antiparasitic works, and pray that it does.

There are also worms that pierce through your skin and make their way to your lungs and when you cough them up, see the writing mass of worms crawling all over your hands, they use it as a way to go back down the other way & get into your digestive system to breed. You may very well have had these worms at some point too, they're apparently pretty common.

-- Fun facts from a vet student

[artsyaxolotl]

Raising baby hermit crabs is exhausting and heartbreaking but also look how cute their little googly eyes are

[pallanophblargh]

Cecropia caterpillars have reached their fifth instar. I held this little guy after doing a tank clean and getting them fresh leaves. They’re needing new food just about every day now. I’ll have to move to a proper box-elder tree for their feed, now that they’ve basically eaten the equivalent of the remaining sapling in my yard.

Hoping they pupate before we leave on vacation, though I can have a friend take care of them when I’m gone.

[zeravmeta]

castoria whose love for guda was so strong that the weapon forged by the planet artoria avalon is imbued with those memories and emotions of the girl who hated every minute her life long after castoria ceased to exist but continues to stay as the weapon to save the humanity that guda loved so much because castoria cant be there anymore but she saved the world all for the sake of one person vs hakuno who loved nero so much that the lonely draco nero who became a beast because no one was there to comfort her at her death had hakuno reach across timelines to haunt guda and ask them to stand by nero because hakuno cant be there right now but even then they still cannot let nero be alone ever again

[floresdehibisco]

Ivan Pokidyshev

[wormyorchids]

New zine landed! SEA BABIES explores cute sea creature life stages 🦀🪼🐡 snag it in my sh0p or sign up for my mailing list before the end of the month!!

[kivinelock]

2 Subnautica art pieces in a day?

it's more likely than you think

This is a space right between the blue brine pool and the lava pools. Drawn from memory.

[fishyfishyfishtimes]

Daily fish fact #685

Lampreys!

While some lampreys turn to a parasitic lifestyle as adults, drilling into the sides of bigger animals to feed on their flesh and blood, lamprey larvae, ammocoetes, are actually filter feeders! The lamprey larva life stage can last up to a decade, and they spend their time being half-buried in sandy substrate, consuming whatever tiny organic particles float to them. Ammocoetes' feeding rate is the slowest of any suspension-feeding animal, and due to this they require a habitat very rich in nutrients.

[kristina100000]

such a girlie girl