I have had a fascination for living forms since a kid, but I am especially enthralled by insects and arachnids.
Having spent too much of my life in an urban area devoid of insects (European agricultural planning doesn’t exactly promote their well-being), I was in a state of perpetual wonderment when I moved to a country featuring a harsh subtropical climate.
I started taking pictures about 5 years ago, and figured we could share pictures amongst like-minded persons. I can’t afford a decent camera (I think quite a lot were taken with an iPod), nor have any knowledge of how to take pictures, so I ask for your forgiveness regarding the quality of what I am about to post.
This thread could simply be part of the interesting picture threads, but I figured a lot of people might not want to stare at those lifeforms, or not be comfortable with them, so I simply decided to create a dedicated thread.
This little fellow (about 2mm?) is one of the numerous “fly-catching spiders” found in Japan. It is a member of the jumping spider family, a family of joyful creatures that are always a delight to watch. I met this adorable little guy on the backseat of my brother-in-law’s cruiser.
Hey, at least they’re all going to be in this one thread that you can avoid (mute, even), as opposed to popping up in the photography or science threads.
Yours are decidedly more colorful than those up north; my local variety are all brown. Thankfully, I’ve only had a couple of incident where they made it into my home and the cats had … well, bad experiences, lol.
So fascinating how members of pretty much any other spider family provoke a visceral fear reaction in me, but with jumping spiders it’s the opposite; for some reason they make me happy and I have no problem with them walking near or on me.
When my son was little, he had a pretty irrational fear of spiders. One day, I spotted a little jumping spider in the bathroom, and I told him we had a new pet. He watched it for like an hour, fascinated by this tiny, cute arachnid. He never truly warmed to the whole 8-legged family, but that seemed to help from then on out.
So many mantis pictures! @Penny_Dreadful’s poser is quite a sight. I have always been fascinated with them. I remember reading in some junior book you could have one as pet, so I scoured the exotic creatures stores to find one, without any luck.
I finally saw my first one 4 years ago. It was sitting right under my nose, but it was so still I never would have seen it. A friend of my wife’s father pointed at it and told me to look at the little brown thing there, and there it was. It looked a lot like @Timex’s, but without the cool green shade of the half-hidden wing.
I have since met another, big greeny one another place, but it had been half devoured by whatever. Still was going on its business, though.
I looked up quite a few things posted here, and I learned about a lot of new varieties from the Americas (that Dobson thing looks like the stuff of nightmare, while those luna moths seem to descend from Heaven)
It looks really nothing special (quite large though, about twice the size of a European one), but its behaviour cracked me up.
This one was hanging aroud this bush of flowers, and while it didn’t give a damn like any other bumblebees about us humans, any winged being, even the largest, remotely approaching her elected bush (no pun) was pursued and chased out immediately. Was she protecting eggs or overprotective of her food? Did she consider it her territory? I have no idea, but I spent a while observing her chasing and chasing out intruders relentlessly that afternoon. Cue Yakety Sax.
