The Critter Collection

Main blog @llatimeria || any comments like "eww kill it" will be blocked on sight

[bbeelzemon]

he fell asleep with his ass out...

@ironcladbeetle

[ironcladbeetle]

[laneybeetle]

blueberry enjoying one of their new air plants <3

the plants were definitely not put in there to be snacks but they are now I guess lol

[laneybeetle]

huckleberry poking her head out to say hello :)

[bogleech]

https://twitter.com/Mills_bomb1969/status/1644004083601141760 A fight between male velvet mites!! A mite fite!!!!!!

[ironcladbeetle]

i just cant get any good images of this guy fjdhegeh

anyway. Stink Bug Experiment Update: hes surprisingly active, always in a different spot when I check on him. He's also usually hiding in there which is pretty impressive as I did not give him that much room to hide

he gets up in the corners of the lid which are pretty good blind spots apparently. keeps making me think he somehow escaped. i dunno if he's Hiding or trying to get fresh air or what but he keeps doing it

considering his activity level i'm tempted to upgrade him into a larger enclosure (the old beetle kritter keeper, probably) and maybe trying to decorate it a little more densely to help him feel secure, but i'm going out of town for all of next week so I'll have to do that when I get back

[ironcladbeetle]

Stinky Experiment Update:

So, right before I left town for a week to visit family, I checked on all my bugs to make sure they were OK, but i couldn't find Mr. Stinky anywhere, which is unusual considering the small size of the enclosure. i went 😬 but didn't have enough time to investigate further. When I got back, I checked Stinky's enclosure again and still couldn't find him, went 😬 once again, and started to figure that maybe he escaped from his house by squeezing through the slats on the lid, kind of giving up on the whole thing. I left the kritter keeper where it was just in case and looked at it every once and a while with no luck and no Stinky. Then, last night, I picked up the enclosure to show my partner that he was definitely just gone and the little asshole was sitting right smack dab in the middle of his log like nothing ever happened. Bastard has a sense of comedic timing.

[ironcladbeetle]

Jesse Stinkman is, once again, completely invisible

[ironcladbeetle]

i just cant get any good images of this guy fjdhegeh

anyway. Stink Bug Experiment Update: hes surprisingly active, always in a different spot when I check on him. He's also usually hiding in there which is pretty impressive as I did not give him that much room to hide

he gets up in the corners of the lid which are pretty good blind spots apparently. keeps making me think he somehow escaped. i dunno if he's Hiding or trying to get fresh air or what but he keeps doing it

considering his activity level i'm tempted to upgrade him into a larger enclosure (the old beetle kritter keeper, probably) and maybe trying to decorate it a little more densely to help him feel secure, but i'm going out of town for all of next week so I'll have to do that when I get back

[ironcladbeetle]

Stinky Experiment Update:

So, right before I left town for a week to visit family, I checked on all my bugs to make sure they were OK, but i couldn't find Mr. Stinky anywhere, which is unusual considering the small size of the enclosure. i went 😬 but didn't have enough time to investigate further. When I got back, I checked Stinky's enclosure again and still couldn't find him, went 😬 once again, and started to figure that maybe he escaped from his house by squeezing through the slats on the lid, kind of giving up on the whole thing. I left the kritter keeper where it was just in case and looked at it every once and a while with no luck and no Stinky. Then, last night, I picked up the enclosure to show my partner that he was definitely just gone and the little asshole was sitting right smack dab in the middle of his log like nothing ever happened. Bastard has a sense of comedic timing.

[ironcladbeetle]

stinky sippy juice

[escuerzoresucitado]

[cad-comic]

[ironcladbeetle]

leafhoppers are also a wildly underappreciated insect. who couldn't love this widdle face

[ironcladbeetle]

looking at wikipedia articles about various true bugs (hemiptera) and realizing this is just an order full of banger after banger after banger. just the suborder Auchenorrhyncha on its own is full of insect greatest hits like cicadas and leafhoppers. but there's also cool guys like assassin bugs and my favorite nightmare animal, giant water bugs.

(... there's also kissing bugs and bed bugs but we don't have to talk about those)

[ironcladbeetle]

Shield Bug Appreciation Post

Edessa rufomarginata

Megarrhampus truncata

Antiteuchus melanoleucus

Graphosoma italicum

Serbana borneensis

[ironcladbeetle]

yeah im definitely now very curious to explore captive stinkbug care, since they have a lot in common with other popular pet invertebrates. They're small, seem to be pretty quiet, not poisonous or venomous, most of them are herbivorous and could live off kitchen scraps, they're ultimately harmless even if they can be very smelly, and I think a lot of younger kids would take delight in the fact that they have an animal called a STINK BUG in their house

however i do think this arrangement could be bad for the stink bug. after all their stink is a Defense Mechanism, something which they only do when decently stressed, and an excited kid would almost definitely bother it until it made it stink for funsies because kids are dumb like that. any pet requires adult supervision and help ofc and you'd probably be a little hard pressed to find a parent as excited about a stink bug pet as their kid is.

otoh this could definitely be used as an educational thing. be nice to bugs or they'll make bad smells at you!! but also millipedes can teach that lesson too without stinking up an entire house and also without being able to fly away from you when handling

[ironcladbeetle]

i keep being a little tempted to be like Ooh I Bet I Could Breed These Stink Bugs In Captivity but considering how prolific of a pest they are that would probably be frowned upon. like. definitely not worth whatever value they'd have as a pet. way too risky

stinky lad is still doing fine though? i think? so they might actually still make decent pets if you can catch one. not highly recommending it myself because they are stinky and they can fly but there is definitely a subset of kids who would love that their pet can be so so stinky on purpose. i'm surprised I haven't seen many other stink bugs as pets tbh, they're pretty cute

[ironcladbeetle]

i just cant get any good images of this guy fjdhegeh

anyway. Stink Bug Experiment Update: hes surprisingly active, always in a different spot when I check on him. He's also usually hiding in there which is pretty impressive as I did not give him that much room to hide

he gets up in the corners of the lid which are pretty good blind spots apparently. keeps making me think he somehow escaped. i dunno if he's Hiding or trying to get fresh air or what but he keeps doing it

considering his activity level i'm tempted to upgrade him into a larger enclosure (the old beetle kritter keeper, probably) and maybe trying to decorate it a little more densely to help him feel secure, but i'm going out of town for all of next week so I'll have to do that when I get back

[ironcladbeetle]

A brown marmorated stink bug manifested in our bedroom (this keeps happening to us and i don't??? know how they keep getting in here????) but i finally actually googled them and turns out they're not only an invasive species where i live but also a significant agricultural pest. so i just... put him in a kritter keeper. we'll... see how it goes, i guess???

[ironcladbeetle]

since they're a true bug, they have long proboscis mouths that they use to pierce the soft and supple flesh of fruits and other crops. i'm hoping that will translate into him knowing how to eat beetle jelly because I don't have any fruit right now

Also while he was in his initial containment jar he released a suspicious brown fluid that I thought would be The Stink but i sniffed it and. nothing. ????

[ironcladbeetle]

Looking at more info about these guys (mostly from websites rallying to exterminate them ironically fjdhdb) and...

hmmmm... definitely an adult for sure but it'a hard to tell if he's male or female without a lot of comparison but honestly rn i'm leaning towards female 🤔

[ironcladbeetle]

YAY HE KNOWS HOW TO EAT JELLY

[ironcladbeetle]

A brown marmorated stink bug manifested in our bedroom (this keeps happening to us and i don't??? know how they keep getting in here????) but i finally actually googled them and turns out they're not only an invasive species where i live but also a significant agricultural pest. so i just... put him in a kritter keeper. we'll... see how it goes, i guess???

[ironcladbeetle]

since they're a true bug, they have long proboscis mouths that they use to pierce the soft and supple flesh of fruits and other crops. i'm hoping that will translate into him knowing how to eat beetle jelly because I don't have any fruit right now

Also while he was in his initial containment jar he released a suspicious brown fluid that I thought would be The Stink but i sniffed it and. nothing. ????

[ironcladbeetle]

Looking at more info about these guys (mostly from websites rallying to exterminate them ironically fjdhdb) and...

hmmmm... definitely an adult for sure but it'a hard to tell if he's male or female without a lot of comparison but honestly rn i'm leaning towards female 🤔