painful baby
myriapod missing a few dozen limbs. worm watcher and arachnid propagator. waiting for rain
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painful baby
a baby
very bitter if you put them in your mouth
Am I?
actually that patch has all 3 Japanese invasive Amynthas/Metaphire, could be interesting data on how they develop in sympatry, maybe I should try to come up with something better than “just grab every worm I see”
I want to catch every worm in this one patch of soil so I can better understand how common it is for them to develop 1 or 2 prostates/male pores but im too lazy to do it systematically and idk what ill do with 200ish large jumpy worms
(buckets filled with worms and worm products) I NEED MORE WORMS ‼️
those tibial spurs are ridiculously pointy though, crazy how they just pop out with stilettos on
my tobacco hornworm pupa eclosed! perhaps as someone with tomato plants I shouldn’t be this happy, but what a lovely moth
she can only card 1 wool.
lest you think I have betrayed bugs for birds, the mantis was a Tenodera which are invasive here and also two catbirds had already torn it mostly in half. I just helped off the poor thing and the bolder bird, which stayed behind for the remains, decided that day that I was its personal bird feeder
was a little worried in the spring because none of the catbirds were bothering me yet and maybe it didn’t make it back from migration, but I should have known better, the Dummy is unstoppable.
in this specific case it’s because the binomial name of gray catbird is Dumetella carolinensis, but also definitely a huge dummy
I prefer to feed garden bugs I find like scarab grubs and cutworms to mealworms which I would assume are less nutritious, but I’ll also let Dummy take some feeder roaches if I have leftover frozen ones from my pets. because who could refuse this face
Dummy shows up in midsummer when the fledglings need a lot of food. it self-tamed in part because I had mealworms in the garage and it got comfortable being around me without me even realizing as it snuck past me and got beakfuls for the kiddos
speaking of early birds… DUMMY is back!!! this little gray catbird decided it was my friend one autumn after I helped it win a fight against a mantis and for 4 years now it has come to yell at me for food
I assume they probably taste like soil and also those nasty defense chemicals they spray. they smell sort of like unscented soap (bitter and greasy odor) mixed with you guessed it soil
they are the exact color and texture of a hog dog except every segment has a ring of little spiny bristles which I guess isn’t exactly like a hot dog at all. they do squirt you with juice sometimes even if you are not biting them. I don’t bite them though. I should stop typing
good morning
I think I caught a couple more that are at least 170, and that’s when not stretched out. I think preservation may have made the study specimens contract although properly relaxed ones shouldn’t be that much shorter than live… I’m just in awe at the size of these big floppers
at 175 x 8mm this Amynthas agrestis exceeds the size range reported for this species in Chang 2016 (160 x 8) and can only be described as a “whopper”
they call me Early Bird cause
yep! and it seems like stuff that’s laid around for a day or so or been rained on no longer have the good stuff in it and it’s ignored
I had forgotten just how much poop there is in the rainforest. they just don’t poop like that back home
step 1: swoogy swoogy step 2: *mwah* I love this poop step 3: STEP AWAY FROM THE FECES, YOU THIEF step 4: don’t talk to me or this poop ever again 😤
little miss tephritid doing her “I found a poop and I won’t share it” dance
I've been told that it's #InsectWeek and that I should plug my work. I'm so bad at marketing... Uhhhhh... Buy my books...! www.owlflyllc.com/publishing
I got home in time for the very last prickly pear flower 💛💛💛
adorable psyllid…. by any chance are there boxwoods in the vicinity
bean
I really like the idea of lashes on an eyeless animal
zero, for now
I may see a strange worm
I seem to have found another strange worm.
you didn’t
the subspi here did go up my boot and had to fling it off before it got up my pants, can’t say I’m THAT comfortable with these!
I had a “Mint Legs” (my profile pic) and she was downright the most erratic animal I’ve ever met. Good training for wrangling wild scolo like this one for photos!
I can assure you this one was not fond of me at all
I love you, Scolopendra subspinipes!!
hello can I help you fellows
augh
infinite thanks to our fearless archivist Hanna, who found this angry letter about a stinky beetle and knew I would want to see it
the new developments on inat inspired me to make a diagnostic thread for every insect order because there's only like 30something of them. going to try and avoid exceptions and extremely technical characteristics when possible. 🧵
As much as I wish it wasn’t the case, being grabbed by a giant and photographed isn’t pleasant at all. I hope big lad remained calm and confident in his toxicity, at least he wasn’t upset enough to release toxins
difference between one who is soft and vulnerable with weapons versus one who is inedibly toxic and armor plated
they don’t smell bad if they’re this fresh!
Oh you don’t like the millipede. I thought you were being funny. I forget people don’t like bugs. I’m glad I can do that.
today I shared freshly picked durian with Treron curvirostra, the Thick-billed Green-Pigeon
I did see a bunch today :) will post them soon
It’s true, I’m 2 millimeter tall 1 millimeter wide
oh yeah
👀
most beautiful and mysterious www.inaturalist.org/observations...
tree (earth)worms www.inaturalist.org/observations...
Been proposed since a while ago I think and not seen anything since. It’s definitely possible though, since I think there is or was something where the CV refused to ID humans past genus Homo as a particular exception
Eating these delicious white mushrooms because iNaturalist’s new generative AI comments told me they were p
perhaps an odd choice but enjoy this fly I saw the other day. it is like 300% more fly than any other I’ve seen, the flyingest fly that ever flew
In other news I’ve been finding a lot of weird worms and other critters in SE Asia! My bug-finding eye has improved so much since I was here last that I take literally all day to finish walking a trail, so much to see. Many good and bad photos to come!
people already believe ChatGPT is the infallible word of god or something, so the same CV suggestion AND garbage AI text to go along with it would make for such a bloody mess
yeah the Computer Vision is actually surprisingly good with some stuff like butterflies and birds and even some crappy little brown moths that I wouldn’t be able to recognize! but what they’re suggesting would just make the problem you noted so much worse
It’s encouraging to see so many people get mad about this, but I have no idea what that means in the long run
It is probably far more pervasive than you think.
withholding my pearls (copy pasted unidentifiable-worm-spiel) from swine (student accounts that stopped posting in 2019)
I was already not doing worm IDs because busy and also wow tedious but I guess I have even less incentive to go back to working that pile of slop (nobody but myself cares about worm ID anyway)
this sucks, but seeing as how my 30k earthworm IDs are essentially all copy pasted “this worm can’t be identified because the photos aren’t useful” uhhhhhh I guess the robot will have no trouble doing the same thing I will not be doing
If you are a user of iNat, this project may well improve your user experience. If you are a taxonomist, it may decrease your incentive to participate.
will when I have some time!
These are not concerns. They are justified and correct criticisms of a Very Bad Idea.
Dunno what you guys are complaining about, I think this new iNaturalist feature is great
artistry of fecal squiggles needs to be studied
I first thought it looked like sea cucumber :(
Can anyone help me identify the fly larvae inside this Mosquito TNT? Video sent by somebody in Tampa, Florida. 🌿 #diptera #insects
moving!
I just published a blog post on the Mosquito TNT, a trap marketed by Tougher Than Tom of Austin, Texas. Exhibit A is their misleading use of photoshopped images to convey effectiveness. I also detail the $80,800 fine the company just paid to the EPA. #mosquitoes colinpurrington.com/2025/06/toug...
I think I’ve seen some 50 mimics per ichneumon model, someone teach them how batesian mimicry is supposed to work
stilt-legged flies, which are trying hard to look like ichneumon wasps
the most dramatic video I’ve ever taken
eated it
“is it humid enough” not till i can drink thru my skin
my favorite weather
beautiful day to find all the worms
there are something like 100 extra bumblebee species in this study (all are synonyms, and... of course, lacking in modern records) - www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Periodic reminder that you should not just pull in data from GBIF and similar aggregators without critically assessing it 🧪
“but what about the neighborhood?” the neighborhood:
oh … not friendly to bees
worm weather
literal dream home
WE DID IT, FOLKS A song for the entomologists of the USDA m.youtube.com/watch?v=yYSI...
Land snail fauna in French Guiana is very poorly known, with each collecting trip revealing new records or species new to science. This paper describes five new species and four newly recorded families: doi.org/10.3897/zook...
sorry I think it was IG and many years ago, can’t find account or video
This is reason to not care about them?
COWARDS
specifying “EARTHworms” in any of my posts now so people stop making jokes about That Guy, he’s not funny at all and actually scares me to death and the only news I want to hear about him is that he was mauled and eaten by a pack of ferrets
if you don’t care about earthworms, give me one good reason why
is there some water mite person
Unless the worm comes home with me for science reasons…
after getting photos, please return worm to the earth
the log flipper’s prize
Antarctic wormy molluscs! SOLENOGASTER! #molluscmonday youtu.be/AOYrIUdwyjw?...
