#true bug

[bedupolker]

Never not a good time to post old watercolor bug doodles

[vintagewildlife]

Ant milking honeydew from aphids By: Unknown photographer From: Wildlife Fact-File 1990s

[celestial-games]

A handful of nocturnal assassin bugs >:3

Featuring millepede assassin, bark assassin, black corsair and western corsair !

[have-you-seen-this-animal]

Picasso bug?

Have you seen the Picasso bug (Sphaerocoris annulus)?

I have now

Yes, in photos/videos

Yes, irl

I'm not sure

Voting ended onJun 3

[alphynix]

Spectember/Spectober 2025 #08: Alphabugs

One last entry for this year!

Dwoll suggested "a family of creatures that have evolved to look like every letter of the Roman/English alphabet":

Grafficimex dwolli is a domesticated species of treehopper closely related to the neotropical genus Cladonota.

Its wild ancestor, the now-extinct species Grafficimex ignotus, had an elaborate pronotum "helmet" with a close resemblance to the English letter F. It proved to be surprisingly easy to raise in captivity, being docile around humans and happily using common houseplants such as Monstera as hosts, and it was also quite morphologically variable. Varieties resembling letters such as E, C, and U were quickly developed, and hobbyists began competing to breed more and more new shapes.

Now, after centuries of selective breeding, the English alphabet has been completed, along with a couple of recently-developed breeds with bulbous protrusions that resemble question mark and exclamation mark shapes.

(Breeds resembling the alphabets of other languages are also in development.)

At about 2cm long (~0.8"), Grafficimex dwolli is rather large for a treehopper, and much like the domestic silk moth it has almost entirely lost the ability to fly.

Along with being kept as novelty pets, often carefully lined up on plant stems to spell out amusing messages, these insects are also quite popular with beekeepers – the honeydew produced by Grafficimex nymphs and adults can be harvested by bees to make dark strong-flavored honeydew honey.

———

NixIllustration.com | Tumblr | Patreon

[ryancat]

this guy :)

reference photo by shanelle97 , posted by @onenicebugperday here !

[critter-creature-or-beast]

This is a...

critter

creature

beast

Voting ended onJan 15

By 弘扬, CC-BY-NC

[textless]

I don't know which creatures nibbled this datura leaf, but I know the assassin bug was not one of them. It is a small but mighty hunter.

Cochise County, Arizona, October 2024.