Dances With Wasps

Greetings, fellow chordate! This is a pro-invertebrate blog. Wasps and their kin (ants, bees, sawflies) are the best animals in the whole world ever. Rotifers are pretty cool too.

[ramalamacreatures]

Handmade polymer clay White-headed Vulture sculpture painted with acrylics.

[tetrameryxx]

An interpretation of a hippocampus done for @doxiedreg

Obviously very sea horse inspired!

[akboro]

[dduane]

Terry knew.

[jagalart]

Hue V

This one is for the awesome Solidagold <3

[apsciencebylyn]

How about a gall fly (Eurosta species?) who seems to be a jumping spider mimic, with a set of large false "eyes" on the back of the thorax?👀 Very fierce (from the back), perpetually blowing raspberries on the front side.

11/10/23. N. Florida (if anyone can ID it)

[crazy-brazilian]

[accessible-tumbling]

ID: A screenshot of a reddit post from r/TwoSentenceHorror by U/Fast-Channel1934 reading: "I work a night shift a hospital. And some times I hear screaming but I work alone"

Below the post is a comment by Fork_Master reading: "Those are the patients you dumb fuck"

End ID.

[ourlordapollo]

The zoo in my hometown posted this picture of one of their cheetah cubs and I'm obsessed

HIS NAME IS YAM ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDINF ME

[carfuckerlynch]

[pangur-and-grim]

I cherish the creature

[littlebeastblog]

I have drawn your beast

[whybray]

[fanonical]

i want there to be more fanfic aus where everything is the same but for one minor detail. everything is the same but there’s sentient animals wandering around. everything is the same but everyone is called gerry. everything is the same but two characters are siblings for no reason

[naomitess]

At the Minnesota Fringe Festival in 2018 there was a show called “Hamlet, But Hamlet’s a Chicken.” It was more or less what it said on the tin. They had made arrangements to borrow some therapy chickens, and for any scene that needed Hamlet, an affectionate handler gently carried in that day’s chicken (it would be one specific chicken for any given performance, but they didn’t have one chicken play Hamlet the whole time as that would have stressed out the chickens) and set her on the stage and then the chicken got to wander around and do whatever she wanted as the other actors did the scene.

There was also, I think, a scene with swordfighting where it was “the fight scene, but everyone’s using pool noodles” and some other similarly bizarre changes, but the MAIN thing I remember

was Hamlet’s soliloquy

because they just announced, “Hamlet’s soliloquy!” and then brought out the chicken and set her on the stage and then let her just hang out being a chicken for like FIVE MINUTES and the entire audience watched, completely riveted. It helps that chickens are cute. At one point she fluffed up her feathers and everyone gasped. A+ show, would go see it again.

[one-weird-mammal-a-day]

Lelwel hartebeest (Alcelaphus buselaphus lelwel)

[franzanth]

Ascaulocardium armatum

Fossil clams that built a case around their body, with bizarre pipe-like protrusions sprouting all over the place like a human heart that grew too many arteries.

Read the paper

[ailurinae]

from @leaping-laelaps

#recently saw a modern specimen from that family (clavagellids) except i had no idea what it was and the name listed was an old synonym#so i spent an hour searching through 19th century scientific texts trying to find the actual name#eventually found it and got around to reading more recent scientific literature about them#there’s not a single thing about these dudes that isn’t fucked up#WHY ARE YOU GROWING A MINERALIZED TUBE AROUND YOUR ALREADY MINERALIZED SHELL#WHY ARE YOU PUMPING IN WATER FROM THE END OF THE TUBE THAT’S BURIED#and now i’m coming back to this fossil species#which is definitely the worst of them all#congrats little buddy that’s the worst any bivalve has ever done it

[balthazarslostlibrary]

Saw a photo of a pigmy seahorse for the first time and it looks like the personification of illness

[balthazarslostlibrary]

World’s most sick man

[bogleech]

yeah see this is what your friends mean when they say they used a microscopic submarine to enter your bloodstream and attack your cold

[addicted2wasps]

Males of Myzinum (Thynnidae) have what is called a pseudostinger. It does not deliver venom, but it is quite pointy. It is pretty painless, in my experience, however. Quite a cool feature! I saw a bunch of them nectaring on goldenrod this past weekend.

[strflr]

Hawai'i 'akepa & Elfin-Woods Warbler for #avianaugust!

carrd / patreon

[goblinbeetle]

roach

[revretch]

Hi Rev! Could you tell us about your favorite ways of locomotion in insects?

Honestly, I think my favorite method of insect (and arachnid) locomotion is "falling."

Big mammals (and especially us big bipedal mammals with heads that split like melons) think of falling very differently from the smaller, lighter animals that are closer to the ground. Most insects are too lightweight to have to worry about silly things like terminal velocity, so falling is just another way of moving to them.

And why not? Gravity is already doing most of the work pulling you down, so you don't even have to exert any energy. If you don't have to worry about taking fall damage, there's no reason not to take the quickest route to the ground--or the quickest way to go any direction, if you need to escape.

In some cases, their shapes are very adapted for it. I have shed skins from baby praying mantises that have kept their shape. If you blow on them, they don't fall over--they land perfectly right side up, or latch onto a nearby surface! They evolved exactly right to catch themselves when dropping down from higher foliage. (Though, adult mantises are significantly less nimble.)

So, if you see an insect fall, don't think that it's clumsy. Just admire the elegant execution of a tried and tested escape plan! ...Unless it's something like a big beetle landing on its back, obviously. That was not planned.

[poondragoon]

> that was not planned

Click Beetles: "Maybe not! But it was planned for"

[revretch]

Very fair!