Author: Harry

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Nature

Harry’s advent calendar of insects, day 12: velvet ant

Perhaps velvet ants are one of those things that seem especially cool because we don’t have them around here.* But come on, it’s a black and red furry ant! Surely that’s cool by anyone’s standards.

This one is Dasymutilla coccineohirta, apparently.

They’re not actually ants, they’re wingless wasps, and they have such a painful sting that their colloquial name is cow killer. A name which, admittedly, passes right through ‘cool’ and into ‘cheesy’.

This one is Dasymutilla occidentalis:

They are such fab looking things.

* To be strictly accurate, there are actually some velvet ants in Europe, and even a few in the UK. But I’ve never seen them, and they aren’t nearly as spectacular as the black and red species from North America I’ve illustrated here.

» Velvet ant is © Ken-ichi Ueda and used under a CC by-nc licence. Cow killer is © Zack Bittner and used under a CC by-nc-sa licence.

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Nature

Harry’s advent calendar of insects, day 11: Uropyia meticulodina

I know I’ve already done a couple of mimicry posts, but I just never get tired of them (check out this beetle pretending to be a fly!). And this one, which I discovered while googling for pictures of something else, is just wonderful.

It is, obviously, a moth. And there are lots of moths that look like dead leaves. But the way it creates a convincingly three-dimensional illusion of a dead leaf curled round in on itself, just by the patterning of the wing, is stunning. It may not be the best camouflage in the natural world — it’s not quite up there with the frogfish, or the octopus — but I can’t think of a comparably amazing bit of trompe l’oeil.

One more for luck:

So fab.

» The first photo is © Wei-Chun (維君) Chang (張). The second is © Shipher (士緯) Wu (吳). Both are used under a CC by-nc-sa licence.

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Nature

Harry’s advent calendar of insects, day 10: cicadas

You might have to turn the volume up on your computer to get a sense of just how loud these things can be in real life.

This is cicadas with a bit of spider monkey in the background:

This time with howler monkeys:

And with a local guide:

I always thought they made the noise by rubbing their wings together, but according to Wikipedia, they have a stiff membrane in the abdomen which clicks when pulled out of shape by the cicada’s muscles, and again when allowed to return to the original shape. The sound is then amplified by a partially hollow body.

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Nature

Harry’s advent calendar of insects, day 9: Tarsoctenus papias

Just a pretty butterfly today.

I don’t know anything about Tarsoctenus papias, really, except that it’s a species of skipper from south America. I found it while browsing the amazingly, intimidatingly comprehensive website Butterflies of America.

The photo is © Kim Garwood.

Categories
Nature

Harry’s advent calendar of insects, day 8: Death’s-head Hawkmoth

This is the Death’s-head Hawkmoth, Acherontia atropos. So called because marking on the thorax looks a bit like a skull.

It features on the poster for Silence of the Lambs although, disappointingly, they edited the image to make the skull much more obvious.

The resemblance is (presumably) pure coincidence, but along with the large size, dark colours, and habit of squeaking audibly when disturbed, it it has given the moth a particular sinister aura, reflected in its Latin name. In Greek mythology there are three Fates: Clotho, who spins the thread of life, Lachesis, who measures the thread, and Atropos who ends the life of each mortal by cutting their thread at the ordained moment.

Which is a hell of a symbolic burden to place on the shoulders of an impressive but harmless moth. [do moths have shoulders?]

They are also known for raiding the hives of honeybees. Which seems suicidal. No-one seems quite sure why they don’t get stung to death; suggestions include the fact that they are covered in hair and scales; that they may have some resistance to bee venom; and, most intriguingly, that they smell like bees.

» The first photo is © Pierangelo Zavatarelli and used under a CC by-nc licence. The second, from Wikipedia, was taken by Siga who has released it into the public domain.

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Nature

Harry’s advent calendar of insects, day 7: Urocerus gigas & Rhyssa persuasoria

This magnificent, scary-looking but completely harmless insect is a female Greater Horntail or Giant Woodwasp, Urocerus gigas:

The woodwasps are a groups of sawflies (members of the hymenoptera along with bees, wasps and ants) which lay their eggs in wood. You can actually see the ovipositor inserted into the wood, as well as the more dramatic orangey spike at the back of the insect, which I guess protects the ovipositor when it’s not in use? I’ve tried googling but I’m not sure. It’s certainly not a sting.

One amazing thing I did learn from Google though: the woodwasps actually inject a fungus along with their eggs, and the fungus infects the wood and serves to pre-digest it, making it easier for the larvae to eat.

This even more spectacular hymenopterid is Rhyssa persuasoria, the Giant Ichneumon:

She is also using her ovipositor to drill through solid wood and lay her eggs; but her young don’t eat wood. No, they eat the larvae of various other insects, including, commonly, our friend Urocerus gigas. In fact, she stings the woodwasp grub to paralyse it, and her own larvae eat it alive from the inside.

The whole thing is amazing: the ability of these insects to drill through wood, the fact that the woodwasps inject fungus to help their young, the way the ichneumon wasps manage to find where the larvae are inside the wood (a combination of scent and vibration, apparently), and the way they paralyse them for their own young. All done by instinct.

» Urocerus gigas is © Nigel Jones and used under a CC by-nc-nd licence. The photo of Rhyssa persuasoria is © Paweł Strykowski and used under a CC by-sa licence.