I've actually been a fan of this series for quite a bit now and figured that now is as good a time as any to share it out. If you're already a fan of "Wild Sex" by Dr. Carin Bondar (if you don't know what that is and wish to know more, click here ps. you won't be disappointed!) you will probably also love "True Facts", by ZeFrank. Here, I'll even give you a link to start of you off featuring one of my favorite animals: The Praying Mantis.
Best watched when stoned, or on high.
Note: This blog does not endorse the throwing of stones at a person until death ensues. Or the use of drugs.
pps. I am not a fourteen year old boy who happens to be a sexual deviant with a violent streak.
of all the dreams and aspirations that I've had over the years, there has been one long standing one that I have always wished to accomplish, and that is to someday open Cyren's Insectarium/Insect zoo... a tropical green-house like setting where I can house a multitude of insects that will be open for visitors to come and learn about these amazing creatures, and hopefully dispel some of the negative stereotypes about insects. So many environmental/conservation efforts are focused on the prolific and typically "cute/majestic" animals like Rhinoceros and Pandas but not many have explicitly acknowledged and promoted the importance and values of some of natures smallest and most often overlooked of inhabitants. I took part in a contest recently, by AmBank that will hopefully bring me one step closer to reaching this dream of mine! As such, I would greatly appreciate it if you could vote for my video entry.
Simply follow THIS LINK, "like" the Facebook page and then choose to "vote now". My entry is in the "videos" section and will contain the following video.
SO SORRY IF I COME OFF ENTIRELY TOO AWKWARD!!! It feels weird talking to a camera.
If I told you that spiders are rather clean animals I suppose some of you might never believe me, but here at my little menagerie, our resident arachnid Keric, makes it a point to groom himself regularly. These sessions, which can last up to an hour at times, are extremely amusing to watch and while some days he may focus almost entirely on the front portion of his body, most days are spent smoothing and polishing the hairs that decorate his rather large and bulbous abdomen. It is really quite a sight and I caught him again in the act earlier this evening. Fortunately for me I had my phone nearby but though I sat and filmed for almost an hour, he did not treat me with the sight of him cleaning up his hind quarters. Here's a short clip of the video I took which might give you a bit of an idea what these sessions are like.
Personally I would say that it reminds me of nothing more than a cat licking behind its ears, although I'm sure a rather large number of feline admirers (who might also, incidentally, be arachnophobes) might object to this statement heartily. Oh well, to each his/her own I suppose! And on that note, I shall leave you with the last post for this weekend! Next week promises to be the busiest yet, what with me taking over several classes for Caryn and my performance gig right after that!!! Phew!
While hand feeding our mantises can get rather messy at times, some of the benefits of doing it is that the insects get conditioned to our presence as time goes by. Before long, it is possible that they will be eating right out of our hands. Literally! Unlike more ephemeral insects like butterflies or moths, creepy crawlies like mantises (specifically the giant asian mantis hierodula sp.) are rather long lived (some of mine have survived for over a year!) and therefore (I think) begin to develop individual specific characteristics/behavioral traits over time. For instance, mantises which have been raised through hand-feeding grow to be more picky about their foods. They learn over time to reject certain kinds of foods or the same foods that have not been prepared in the same way.
Our current female for instance used to eat worms that were simply cut open for her. As time went by however, I started noticing that many of the worms intestinal tracts were filled with copious amounts of what I assume is worm poo. As such, I began de-gutting them before feeding them to her (it's really quite easy, after snipping off the worm head, I use a pair of clippers to hold onto the exposed end of worm intestinal tract sticking out and give it a good pull. It usually comes out in one piece. Usually). Over time, Dian Dian began to learn the difference between these de-gutted worms and the non-gutted ones. If I were to offer her two worms at the same time, one gutted and one not, she would experimentally lick at the exposed ends of both worms. The result was that 99% of the time she would go for the one that had been gutted. Indeed the result seemed to be that she began refusing un-gutted worms altogether. Should she be eating one and discover, upon chewing into the center that the worm had not been gutted, she would flail her claws wildly and flick the offending food object as far away from her as possible and (as I imagine it) stare at me reproachfully for another one. Feeding her, as such, has become quite an occasion for me and although I would not go so far as to attribute an insect with human emotion, I suppose I can say with some certainty that they do seem to possess personal characteristics and behavioral traits.
This is a video of our daily morning feeding sessions. As you can see from the start of the video, she is quite capable of eating two of those worms at a time, although the first worm should be about almost finished before I bring the second one over. Her appetite varies on a day to day basis but she typically eats anywhere between two or three of these and they must be cut, de-gutted and brought to her mouth with a pair of tweezers before she will consent to feeding upon it. She almost never catches her own food anymore these days.
No classes for me to teach today so besides responding to my students emails, I decided to just kick back, relax and enjoy the beginnings of a really long weekend. And what better way for me to do that really than to observe some of the animals in my study! With the semester having begun to kick off in full force, I really don't have much time to study my animals during the course of the week so when I do get to go home and take some time off for myself, there is nothing really that I would enjoy doing more than observing these little critters at work. Now one of the best things about having these live animals to observe in my study is really how I grow to be so familiar with them and their habits but this relationship work both ways as they grow more and more accustomed to having me poke and pry about their habitats as times goes by. Documenting them for the purposes of sharing, therefore becomes a lot easier than say, if I had to go out and search for them in the wild. Keric, my rosea tarantula, for example has become a lot more agreeable to me snooping about and photographing him in his tank and our praying mantis will now even consent to accepting pieces of food in exchange for her compliance to being handled on a regular basis. But as tempted as I was to amuse myself with my insect and arachnid companions, I had a crustacean to deal with and a rather aggressive one too!
Marina, our freshwater lobster, or crayfish arrived only just yesterday and though probably still needs a few more days to settle in completely, was "comfortable" enough in her new home to claim a corner of it for herself by waving her pincers menacingly whenever I move nearby. If you look at a crayfish from up close you can see that the actual amount of appendages it possesses are really quite astounding. Aside from the two main feelers which it uses pretty much the same way a blind man might use his walking cane, they posses several pairs of smaller ones that extend just in front of their mouth as well. These, I've discovered, seem to react to scent or whatever it is that passes for "smell" under water and twitch enticingly if a turtle pellet is held nearby. After these come the pincers or claws, these are really just highly developed pairs of modified legs and if you were to pick up one of these crayfish and flip it upside down you will see that the other legs possess miniature versions of the front claws as well. Indeed, for an animal covered almost entirely by a tough shell-like carapace, crayfish are really quite sensitive to touch and they achieve this by the little bristles that stick out of their shell which act as receptors that measure sudden changes in water currents and their surroundings to let them know if any prey are nearby as Marina so expertly demonstrated when I experimentally dropped a mealworm into the opposite end of her tank.
But while these marvelous appendages are usually used in hunting and in self defense, they are more than adequately equipped for constructing crayfish-homes as well, as I observed today, and they do this mainly by behaving in the same manner as a bulldozer: by digging their front most claws slightly into the ground, and then shoving forward with all their might, using two or three pairs of their smaller legs to gather silt and gravel underneath them as they move along. Indeed, this seems to be a process that is most laborious for such a small creature, but Marina now has a comfortable little "trench" into which she retreats to whenever she feels insecure and threatened which leads me to my other observation that for a bottom-dwelling, mostly nocturnal animal, they seem to have a rather remarkable sense of sight considering how my fingers hovering almost 10 inches away is enough to elicit a claw-waving response from Marina!
I decided to name my little mantis nymph Ninja!!! If you see the way he hops from place to place and the stealthiness with which he hunts his prey you will know what I mean! Meanwhile Ninja just went through his second molt! Second molt already and he's starting to look a lot bigger than he was! COOL! Pretty soon I'll have a full grown mantis in no time!
Mantis molt!
Meanwhile, what an appetite!!! Check out the following video! It's really quite amusing watching them hunt although, one might feel sorry for the small insects currently being devoured! Ah well, circle of life and all that. Ps. if you can, click the "rectangle" button on the bottom right of the video to watch it full screen. I used a HD camera so you can really get in on all the details!
the festivities have always been about the munchies! Good food! Good drinks! And best of all good cookies! You know, being somewhat of a sweet tooth myself I've always taken the Lunar New Year as a personal challenge to myself to eat more sweet cookies and crackers ths current year than I had the previous!!! This year however i am trying to watch my intake because those abs ae not going to magically carve themselves by next Saturday if I don't keep up with my exercise routine and watch what I eat! Ironically this year, both my sister and my mother seem to be trying to outdo each other with the cookies and treats!
My all-time favourite, Baby Popiah!
At the same time though, I'm perfectly oaky with everyone else eating in front of me! I mean we have to be sensitive that not everyone in the family is as disciplined and weight conscious as myself right.... although I will be honest, watching other people eat when I'm disciplining myself does give me sort of a kick. Talk about living vicariously... but its true, I do enjoy watching people eat! Oh and especially my pets, when they eat I go absolutely ga-ga over it and then there's the risk of overfeeding them! You know, I once had a goldfish who wouldn't stop eating, so I just kept feeding and feeding him and then later he died. It was the saddest moment of my life but I don't know why I couldn't stop feeding him even though I knew it was enough. I guess I must've been pretty damned hungry at that moment. It doesn't happen much anymore though. No, I'm better at controlling myself now. *ZEN* Meanwhile, its quite entertaining to watch some insects eat! No, really its like looking at a video from another universe.
Oriental Mantis nymph chomping on a small fly
Of course you don't have to take my word for it! I mean, I guess bugs are not everybody's cup of tea right? But still, I haven't done one of these nature shorts in a long time so I did manage to prepare something recently for all of you! Check it out.
The annoying thing about these hairstyles, is that you ABSOLUTELY have to style them before going out of the house if you don't want to look like a schlob.
Do you remember the cartoon James and the Giant Peach? It was based on Roald Dahl's book of the same name about a boy who spills a bag of magical crocodile tongues resulting in a trip halfway around the world in a giant peach (yeap, the fruit), kept aloft by a flock of seagulls and accompanied by a bunch of giant, and intelligent insects all seeking to live the American Dream (if that's not propoganda I don't know what is!) Meanwhile, one of my favourite characters on the show was non other than Mr. Grasshopper.
Mr. Grasshopper from James and the Giant Peach
In James and the Giant Peach, Mr. Grasshopper was a "great-green grasshopper" that was the size of a dog (though in the movie he was taller than a man) who is the wisest and one of the kindest characters in James and the Giant Peach. Mr. Grasshopper speaks with the cultured air of an English Gentleman and is passionate about such things as art and music. He even sings!
Unfortunately, I am not a big fan of grasshoppers in real life! For one, they eat up my plants at an ALARMING RATE and for a second.... well let's just say I had an extremely traumatic childhood experience with a full grown locust when I was but a wee lad. But I digress. A few days ago while we were rooting around the garden, we found a grasshopper chomping happily on one of our vegetables. Needless to say mom told me to get rid of it. However, pest or not, I felt bad simply killing the poor creature, and throwing it away was not an option because THEY ALWAYS COME BACK. And that's how I found myself, an unwilling caregiver to said grasshopper.
Not very pleasant to look at is he? But hopefully we'll come to like each other with time.
ML: O.o...Your hair is bigger than ever I see...
Me: Yeah, I'm keeping a second brain in there.
Hmmm there seems to be some problem with the sound (it skips at about 40 something seconds) but otherwise check out this latest video I made of my latest butterfly. Also, I found this rather cool video of a swallowtail butterfly in flight done in slow motion. Different species, however as this is a Jakou-Ageha (Byasa Alcinous) from Japan.
"Like many other members of the insect world, the lift generated by butterflies is more than what can be accounted for by steady-state, non-transitory aerodynamics. Studies using Vanessa atalanta in a windtunnel show that they use a wide variety of aerodynamic mechanisms to generate force. These include wake capture, vortices at the wing edge, rotational mechanisms and Weis-Fogh 'clap-and-fling' mechanisms. The butterflies were also able to change from one mode to another rapidly"
Ever wondered what it would be like, living a day in the life of a butterfly? Well, I sure do, and I don't exactly know the answers, but I made this short video clip as an intepretation on what it might be like. It seems to me that butterflies are always travelling, they never stay in one place for too long, almost like they are on a long journey that they will never complete in their short lives. Anyway. Enjoy. :)
Oh my throat is sooo sore I'm not even kidding! It feels like I swallowed a bucket of acid and then someone sprinkled salt on the remains and then the smell attracted little ants, the tiny red ones which started eating my throat from the inside out! That's how bad it is and I won't be surprised if that's really going on in there! See that's why I love writing, you never have to open your mouth to say a thing...just perfect! But you know what else is new? This new documentary on Butterflies by Illustra Media
Okay so I don't quite agree with some of the things said here and I think that Illustra Media is just using everyone's favourite insect, The Butterfly as a poster-boy for their Christian propoganda of Intelligent Design (no offence intended to Christians). Personally I've always been more of a Darwinian myself and although it is true that the sudden changes in the insects form during the life-cycle of a butterfly is far to sudden to constitute any form of evolution I believe (and I cannot say for sure because I am not a biologist myself) that evolutionary biologists study the evolution of organisms as a whole, and not the individual stages of the organism's physiological maturity! Indeed Intelligent Design will insist that everythign was created in the dawn of time the way they are now and forever more... slightly far fetched even for someone like me in the light of fossil evidence, DNA mapping and carbon dating... However, since I do consider myself rather open minded - and of course this IS a documentary about butterflies - I must say I will take a watch myself before deciding ultimately; Darwinian Evolution or Intelligent Design?
***Metamorphosis is scheduled to be released in 2011.***
i wonder why when people ask you "what three things would you bring with you on a desert island?" no one ever replies, "A BOAT." ... DUH!!!
The chrysalis at 10.00am in the morning, four
hours before the emergence of the butterfly
Hey guys, I was pretty much hell-bent on capturing the moment of eclosure of my latest Citrus Swallowtail butterfly and by goodness I managed to get it. I woke up at 8.00am in the morning just to be sure (most butterflies eclose in the early hours of the day) but I guess the cool air from my air conditioning system must have hampered with the butterfly's internal timing system (butterflies are generally inactive and go into a period of stasis in the cold) because he sure took his time coming out. I decided to play the waiting game, first removing the butterfly enclosure into the Garden for sunlight and warmth, and then setting up my camera on a tripod inside the enclosure while I sat nearby with my notes and waited. Although I was expecting eclosure in a few minutes or so, it wasn't until 2pm that the chrysalis showed any signs of activity and before you know it, a new butterfly is born into this world. As I do not have any females at the moment with which to breed him with I think I will release him into the Garden tomorrow, after I've taken some pictures and sketches for documentation purposes. Meanwhile, enjoy the following video;Truly a Precious Moment and one that even an avid butterfly breeder such as myself have only seen on occasion. Ladies and gentleman, I present to you Birth of a Butterfly.
Just a quick update in between revision notes. I was out in the garden to day checking on my plants, especially removing locust babies from my flowers (I found a couple of empty locust egg cases in the Garden earlier this week and we've been swamped ever since! I've already removed about 10 from the garden as of yet and still hunting) when I noticed a slight disturbance in the air above the lime-tree saplings that I am cultivating for my butterfly breeding. A swarm of insects for sure! But upon closer inspection I learnt that they were not just any insects, they were bees! And in their hundreds, buzzing away in no particular order, a cloud of winged furies circling a particular spot in the air. I wasted no time in getting my little digi-camcorder to film this.
Now some of you must be thinking, how brave of him to go out during a bee-swarm, much less sit underneath it and take videos and while I would be more than happy to accept your praises of bravery I must say that I was never in any real danger to begin with. No, not because I have an innate affinity to bees, but rather, because these were stingless bees!
Closeup of a Stingless Bee
What? A bee with no sting?That's right, stingless bees are a member of a large group of bees. They all fall under the tribe of Meliponini or Melipones and are closely related to other bee species such as the honey bee, the carpenter bee, the orchid bee and the bumble bee. Although most bees do in fact posses stings (stingless bees included) the stings of stingless bees are higly underdeveloped and therefore not suitable to use in defense of the hive. As such, unlike her more feisty cousins, the small stingless bee is of absolutely no harm to the unsuspecting or unwary gardener who may accidentally disturb her on one of her pollen picking routes.
Doing My Part for the Environment.The stingless bees often form their hives in cracks in rocks or hollow logs. In the case of my Garden, the three stingless bee colonies that we have are all formed in the little cracks of the rock wall on the far side of the garden. I often encourage the formation of stingless-bee hives in my garden because bees are obviously a very crucial keystone to our ecosystem. One of the major pollinators in the world, bees are responsible for the growth of many commercial plants, flowers and vegetables. The stingless bee present a very welcome alternative to the honeybee in my garden because while I do want the benefits of bee pollination for the citrus plants in the Garden I most certainly do not wish to recieve complains of bee stings from the neighbours, nor risk getting stung myself!
Stingless bee-hive entrance with "honey
tunnel"
What about Honey?While it is a myth that all bees produce honeys, Stingless bees most certainly do! In fact in some parts of Australia, stingless bees are cultivated for the small scale production of honey. Much like her cousin, the Honey Bee (Apis Melifera), stingless bees posses large pollen sacks on the back of their leggs to enable them to transport floral pollen back ot their hives. Stingless bees also collect nectar, which is stored in an extension of their gut caled a crop. Back at her hive, the bee ripens the nectar by spinning them inside her mouthparts until honey is formed. Ripening concentrates the honey and increases sugar content. With the stingless bees, sometimes honey is so abundant that it leaks out from the opening cracks in the hive!
Entrance to a Stingless Bee hive
Bees normally swarm for various reasons, one of which is the natural reproduction cycle of the colony. A young queen, setting off into the strange new world to set up a colony of her own will often leave with an entourage of hundreds, sometimes even thousands of her sisters to help her establish a new life elsewhere. Bee societies are as such, that they operate like a superorganism and one individual bee cannot survive long on her own. And while a swarm of bees would naturally look threatening and scary, bee swarms (including honey bees and many other bees known to sting) are generally harmless as the bees are the least aggressive in this stage of their life-cycle. Ironically, you're more likely to get stung when there is just one bee.
Stingless bee workers (left) and their Queen (right)
