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Boogie Woogie Aphids Bust a Move All Over Nature
When redditor your_name_here___ posted a video of some feathery-looking bugs dancing, no one wanted to believe they were really called boogie woogie aphids. It sounds like a joke, but a little digging revealed that that is what they are called. Bugs get their names from people, after all. Their other common name is the woolly beech aphid. They live on American beech trees and produce their own wax, which is the feathery stuff you see waving in the wind. The boogie woogie dance is a defensive action, possibly designed to confuse a predator. Or redditors, as the case may be. Don't get too close, because they also have needlelike mouth parts they use to pierce a beech tree, and if they are scared or angry enough, they will pierce your skin. Otherwise, they will just boogie on! #aphid #boogiewoogieaphid, #insect #woollybeechaphid
Man's Ear Blockage and Discomfort Turned Out to be a Cockroach
Warning: insects. If you’re not good with stories about insects inside certain body parts, now’s the time to look away and click the next article. You’ve been warned!Zane Wedding woke up with a blocked ear after a fun day of swimming. Initially, he believed it was just water in his ear. He, however, rushed to see a doctor after feeling movement in his ear even when he wasn’t moving. His doctor said to take some antibiotics and to blow a hairdryer into his ear to help dry it out. He was told that if the feeling in his ear remained, then Wedding must return. The man returned after two sleepless nights. It turns out that he had an insect in his ear. The ear specialist worked for a few minutes to extract the bug and managed to pull out a full cockroach. "I felt [my eardrum] pop as it came away. The lady who extracted it said: 'I've never seen this before. I've read about it, but never seen it'.” He said. Image credit: Zane Wedding #swimming #accidents #insect #ear
Winners of the Close-up Photographer of the Year 2021
The top 100 winners of Close-up Photographer of the Year 03 (2021) or CUPOTY 03 are now featured on its website showing the winners gallery.The Close-up Photographer of the Year website was the brainchild of husband-and-wife duo Tracy and Dan Calder of Winchester, UK. They wanted to put close-up, macro and micro photography on the center stage and be celebrated in its own right.Tracy, a former editor of Outdoor Photography and a features editor at Amateur Photography, has over 20 years experience in the photo magazine industry. She’s also a photography instructor at West Dean College in Sussex, and an author of Close-up & Macro Photography, which has been translated into French and Chinese. Dan is a contributor to Black + White Photography magazine.This year’s Close-up Photographer of the Year (CUPOTY 03) has more than 9000 photos from 55 countries across nine different categories. These categories are insects, animals, plants and fungi, underwater, butterflies and dragonflies, intimate landscape, manmade, micro, and young.From each category, the top three winners were chosen alongside with the other finalists. Here are the top three winners per category.#photography #CUPOTY #MacroPhotography #CloseupPhotography #photographycompetitionInsects
Flatid Planthopper Nymph Looks Like a Walking Piece of Popcorn
Photographer Andreas Kay (1963-2019) has spent years photographing beautiful and strange insects in Ecuador like this one above.The insect that looks like a walking piece of popped popcorn is the flatid planthopper nymph. It is covered in protective waxy filaments that makes it look like a fluff of cloud, or to our eyes, a popped kernel!There are about 12,500 known species of planthoppers, which get their names from the leaf-like appearance of the adult insect and their ability to "hop" to move around. They feed by sucking sap from plants, and some species are considered pests as they can produce a sugary secretion called honeydew that promote the growth of mold on plants.#planthopper #popcorn #AndreasKay #insect #nymph
Vinegaroon: An Acid Spraying Arachnid That Looks Like a Cross Between a Spider and a Scorpion
April showers bring May flowers, but you know what else the summer rains bring out? This strange creepy crawly that looks like a cross between a spider and a scorpion, as mentioned by the Big Bend National Park in its Facebook post. Oh, and if that's not strange enough, the bug can also shoot acid.Behold the vinegaroon, a 3-inch long arachnid that look quite menacing with its huge scorpion-like pincers or pedipalps and long whip-like tail (hence its nickname, the 'whip scorpion'). It can aim and shoot a spray of 85% acetic acid (vinegar) from the base of its tail.But for all that menacing qualities, the nocturnal vinegaroon is actually quite benign and usually won't bother you unless you annoy them. After the rain, vinegaroons would climb out of their burrows and search for food and mates.#vinegaroon #whipscorpion #scorpion #insect #spider #arachnid #BigBendNationalForest #acid #aceticacid #vinegar #tail #pincers #pedipalps
Mosquitonado: A Horrifying Tornado of Millions of Swarming Mosquitoes
Forget firenado! The new horror is the mosquitonado, a tornado of millions of mosquitoes that’s happening in the Kamchatka Peninsula in the far-eastern regions of Russia.In a viral video clip, swarms of millions of mosquitoes amass and swirl in giant pillars that look like tornadoes.Video clip: Russia No Context/Twitter#mosquito #tornado #mosquitonado #insect #KamchatkaPeninsula #Russia #Siberia
How Do Fireflies Synchronize Their Flashings? By Looking at Each Other
It's a spectacular summertime display of natural light: thousands of male fireflies flashing together in harmony but how in the world do they know when to synchronize flashings?New findings by Orit Peleg of the University of Colorado at Boulder and colleagues suggest that individual fireflies know when to flash their lights in unison by ... looking at other fireflies!When the researchers, for example, put a single male into the pop tent all on his own, that bug would flash without a good sense of rhythm—a few bursts here, a few bursts there. Increase the number of fireflies, however, and things began to change.“When you start putting 20 fireflies together, that’s when you start observing what you see in the wild,” Sarfati said. “You’ve got regular bursts of flashes, and they’re all synchronized.”The fireflies, in other words, likely aren’t hardwired to flash with a particular pattern. Instead, their light displays seem to be more social. Bugs watch what their neighbors are doing and try to follow along. The group’s findings, Peleg said, could help researchers learn more about a range of other synchronous behaviors in nature—and maybe one day design swarming robots that act in tandem.#firefly #synchrony #insect #biology #animalbehaviorVideo: Peleg Lab
New "Very Small and Cute" Beetle Species Found in Fossilized Dinosaur Dung
Biologist Martin Qvanström of Uppsala University in Sweden and his colleagues were studying 230-million-year-old coprolites or fossilized droppings when they discovered something unusual: a large number of beetle fragments preserved in the dung.The researches named the newly discovered beetle species Triamyxa coprolithica. Qvanström surmised that it was probably semiaquatic with a convex body shape, saying "Boat shaped almost. Very small and cute."From New Scientist:“To get fossilised remains of this quality, researchers have relied in the past on finding them in amber (fossilised tree resin),” says Jesus Lozano-Fernandez at the Institute of Evolutionary Biology in Barcelona, Spain. “The novelty here is the possibility of looking at what is inside of the opaque fossilised poo.”The earliest amber deposits formed about 140 million years ago early in the Cretaceous period, meaning we can’t rely on amber to learn about beetle evolution before that.These coprolites allow us to learn about this and ecological relationships in an earlier period called the Triassic.The droppings containing T. coprolithica probably came from Silesaurus opolensis, a reptilian dinosaur relative which ate these beetles in large numbers.#fossil #beetle #coprolite #dinosaur #paleontology #insect
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