i like bugs

hi my name is snail! i’m an entomologist and ecologist in north carolina. please feel free to send me asks or submissions about bugs!

[heedra]

if you learn to love bugs with all your heart the world will feel half as hostile and a thousand times as big

[addicted2wasps]

WASP BLAST! I got bored, and crammed together every single wasp drawing I have done so far. A collage, if you will. Enjoy!

[deepfriedmarshmallow]

So cute! I love all the different shapes and colors :D

These 3 are my favorites (a hard choice indeed!)

Personal story under the cut

This reminds me of elementary school; one of my school's playgrounds had a plastic slide set that was infested with these fuzzy, black, flying ant-like bugs (I thought they were termites for some reason, but now Im pretty sure they were wasps).

I used to go to sit on the slide and pet them, they were very docile and "friendly"

I loved them, they were so soft and fuzzy 🥰

[deepfriedmarshmallow]

I changed my mind, this ones my favorite

I cant believe I almost missed her, look at that face 😭

[addicted2wasps]

Way ahead of you! 😜

[stardog-howls]

[apocrital]

I think there are too many people throwing around that wasps can recognise human faces for something that has only been confirmed in one wasp species (and not even the species people usually seem to bring up)

Northern paper wasps (Polistes fuscatus) have been found to process the faces of other wasps as a whole, rather than just a collection of individual parts. This is called holistic processing, and it's the same way humans typically process each other's faces. This has been tested in a couple of other Polistes species and they did not process faces in the same way. This is very cool for Northern paper wasps! But crucially, processing each others' faces this way does not mean they process human faces the same. Recognising one another aids them due to their specific social dynamics, but recognising humans wouldn't present the same evolutionary pressures. In one study, their holistic processsing didn't even extend to another paper wasp species, but recognition of human faces has not been tested in paper wasps so we can't say one way or the other even if it looks unlikely

However, it has been tested in other species! Common yellowjackets (Vespula vulgaris) and Western honeybees (Apis mellifera) were capable of discriminating between human faces (although they had to be taught to do so as they probably don't do so naturally) and it seems they also have some capacity for holistic processing. Nevertheless, I feel like I see paper wasps brought up more often than yellowjackets when this fact comes up

There's a lot that still needs studying on this topic, and what we do have points to some really interesting hymenopteran abilities that are not found in many other animals, but it does frustrate me seeing these things exaggerated and overgeneralised to all wasps/Hymenoptera and then presented as facts when there simply isn't evidence for that yet. I love wasps and I typically see this brought up to endear people to them, which I respect, but spreading misinformation for a 'good cause' is still unhelpful

References

Tibbetts et al. (2021) 'Individual recognition is associated with holistic face processing in Polistes paper wasps in a species-specific way'

Sheehan and Tibbetts (2011) 'Specialized Face Learning Is Associated with Individual Recognition in Paper Wasps'

Avarguès-Weber et al. (2017) 'Recognition of human face images by the free flying wasp Vespula vulgaris'

Dyer, Neumeyer and Chittka (2005) 'Honeybee (Apis mellifera) vision can discriminate between and recognise images of human faces'

Avarguès-Weber et al. (2018) 'Does Holistic Processing Require a Large Brain? Insights From Honeybees and Wasps in Fine Visual Recognition Tasks'

[yossyislandd]

now that we have successfully nitpicked the difference between poisonous and venomous it is time we nitpicked the difference between parasite and parasitoid

[ivy-michaels]

[scribbling in a notebook] The…xenomorph…is an…example of…a parasitoid…organism.

[yossyislandd]

yes

[yossyislandd]

that being said landlords are parasitoids

[boiga]

A herd of common aquatic springtails (Sminthurides aquaticus) in Hertfordshire, UK

by Will Atkins

[midwestemogirlfriend]

[dogpuppy]

[indolentjellyfish]

tiny glass aphid

[tomhoppusdelonge]

[curls up into a ball] I can see why pillbugs use this move

[paperandpencilsandskips]

[symbolone]

this has been a wasp psa

[strangelyrose]

Cicada Killer with Cicada

Instagram

Etsy

[smugpugchimera]

Making a wasp photo study and I can't get over how freaking Beautiful bug's are, the way their plates lock in together, the geometry of it, the fine-tuned propositions, so delicate yet sturdy. aahhh

[smugpugchimera]

cutes

[headspace-hotel]

read one time that bonobos and humans are the only animals that mate face to face, which is false and the writer must have used an unnecessarily restrictive definition of "animals," because millipedes also mate face to face

How do I know this? well i turned over some leaves one time and mistakenly exposed a millipede couple in the throes of passion. was worried at first that they were eating each other or something but I looked it up and thats how they have sex

[organical-mechanical]

oh my god???

no one told me that millipede sex is cute??

[radwolf76]

@bedupolker

[bedupolker]

Lobsters and crawfish do too 😃

The primary difference, scientifically speaking, is that while millipedes make love, crawfish FUCK

[hawkpartys]

it must feel good as fuck to walk on the surface tension of water as a bug

[cartoonscientist]

things chronically outside people say:

“wait! gotta put on my sunscreen” [you’re about to walk to 7/11]

“tick season, tuck your pants”

“you know, tick season just keeps getting longer and longer with climate change”

“why didn’t you have your knife with you?”

[knocks their shoes on the sidewalk and fifty pounds of dirt clods fall off]

[going into the rain without an umbrella] “I mean, you’re gonna get wet eventually, right?”

“I hear the rockhounding in this part of the county is INSANE”

“it rained last night, and you know what that means: MUSHROOMS”