The “Lady” in the name “ladybug” is the virgin Mary. People just cannot stop giving religious names to this bug.
The reason for this was that if you lived in an agrarian society then your survival was a throw of the dice every year, depending on the success of the crops. A failed crop year is a very hard year where deaths are expected. And if you grew a cereal like wheat, there were several things that could cause your crops to fail, but one of the big ones was if you happened to get a fuckton of aphids. You know what eats aphids? Ladybugs! If there are lots and lots of ladybugs around, there was a good chance that it’d be a good crop year! They were little crop protectors! When your family lives or dies on the success of that crop, of course they’d be seen as a blessing and given an appropriate name!
Flag-footed Bug (genus Anisocelis), a member of the leaf-footed bug family (Coreidae). The “flags” are tibial expansions. They serve several purposes: attract mates, a warning they might be toxic and as a diversion, hoping predators will attack the flags and not the insect.
alright so when I was a teenager I went to this bug-themed summer camp for socially stunted nerds and on the way back from it I visited the university of kentucky. I met with an entomologist there and while we were touring the department he asked "wanna see something cool?" so he took me down an elevator to what must've been a sub-sub-sub basement on a card-access only floor, and after turning several more corners we went through two sets of (I'm not even exaggerating) 12-inch thick doors, opening onto one long as fuck corridor. each side of this hallway was lined with about 50 refrigerators. and each and every single one of these refrigerators was filled with hundreds of thousands. of live. bedbugs. the very reasonable explanation for this was that they were doing research on insecticides and needed to test them on real samples, but they could not under any circumstances allow them to escape, so they had to be kept under area 51 levels of overkill containment. but reasonable or not that was very much not what I anticipated seeing that day. so yeah. I decided after that I did not want to become an entomologist
Today's wasp of the day is the thistledown velvet ant (Dasymutilla gloriosa)!
Credits: photo 1, photo 2
Also known as the glorious velvet ant, this tiny ambling squeaker has confused scientists with her fashion choices. At first it was believed that she was mimicking the fruits of the creosote bush (Larrea tridentata), which are also common around her stomping grounds. Turns out that she's been wearing white millions years before the plant arrived on its landmass. Now it is believed that her white fuzz simply helps her keep cool— which isn't as exciting of an answer but still an interesting look into how organisms adapt to living in the desert.
Start with a large sheet of cardboard. Stores like home depot have large moving boxes that come flat like this, perfect for this project.
I use a projector to trace my butterfly, but you can also put tracing paper up to a screen and glue it to your cardboard, or ask your library to let you use their projector.
Make sure to trace not just the outside, but also all of the markings and patterns. Doing the antennae as well and keeping the scrap cardboard will allow you to measure out the right length.
2.
Cut around the outside of your lepidopteran and crease where the wings meet each other and the body. I use my hands, but a ruler can help. After bending your wings into a natural position, make the body and head with your clay of choice, mine is foam clay which is cheap and easy to use.
Blend the sides of the body into the wings just enough to stick, this will hold the pose you've chosen.
Prop up the wings with whatever is around and keep in a safe spot to dry. Mine dries overnight at this size. You can see I've used bottles for mine
3.
Once dry and solidified, the clay holds the wings in place in the way you left them.
Measure your antennae wire a little longer than needed and poke it into the clay. If it doesn't stay, add a little dot of super or hot glue at the base.
Glue a mounting bracket on the back. You can angle this however you like to have your lepidopteran upright, sideways, or even upside down
4.
Paint your sections individually so you don't lose your trace lines. I go in with white first to cover up the print on the cardboard, then put the correct colors over that.
If making a high contrast lep like this, go in with black at the end to clean up your edges.
If adding any fur to the body, get a piece larger than you need and hot glue it on, then trim the backing underneath the fibers with tiny snips, as not to cut the fur itself, and carefully glue the edges of the backing to the body as well
5.
Brush a matte finish like mod podge over your final product. Hold your lep up to where you want it to hang, then mount with a nail
ellievsbear
gracieabrams
vaporwave
snowghoul
turnnoffyourmind
romaincrisis
discoholicmusic
