tarantulas can live for well over a decade, and female tarantulas can expect to breed multiple times before they finally kick it! and since there’s always the expectation of there going to be a new clutch of eggs in the nest every year, there’s no benefit in getting rid of the frogs that will keep those eggs safe.
a female columbian lesserblack tarantula will treasure and protect her frogs until the day she dies, and then those frogs will go into the care of whichever of her daughters inherits her burrow! it’s an eternal cycle. a cycle of frog.
the scorpion came upon the frog on the riverbank.
“friend frog,” said the scorpion, waving its little pincer things in an emotive fashion, “would you carry me across? the river is wide, and I cannot swim.”
the frog was a kindly fellow, and hesitated, thinking it over.
now, this story could have progressed as it normally does, into a very sad and rather ham-fisted metaphor for the nature of the human experience, but luckily for both the frog and the reader (though not for the scorpion), our story is interrupted rather abruptly here by the sudden appearance of a ginormous fucking spider popping out of the bushes and making short work of the scorpion.
“Ribbort,” said the giant fuckoff tarantula, delicately wiping some scorpion off her huge terrifying spider fangs, “there you are! I was worried. you know better than to wander off into an allegory like this. come home, the children miss you.”
the frog, whose name was Ribbort, shrugged his damp little shoulders. indeed, some metaphors just can’t be accurately applied to the natural world, due to the enormously complex and often unexpected web of relationships between living creatures in any given ecosystem, and that is the way of things.
thinking about the guy on reddit that posted a pic of a giant water bug he put on his arm after flipping it over because it was on its back
the sequel: tarantula hawk in an open cup
wheres that pic of the person holding a blue ring octopus?
this is the only image on these internets that has ever seriously made me scream out loud. these things are like, among the most lethal animals on the planet
as an australian who grew up on the beach; blue ringed octopi have enough venom to kill 10 people. they are normally grey-yellow but if they show their spots, they are mad. this person is literally inches away from eeby deeby
Just kidding, guys. These birds are just trolling the hell out of ants. I really, really wanted to show you this clip of a Galapagos finch or something harassing the shit out of formica ants and then being all “Yes, yes, bathe me in your fury! Your chemical defenses are now my own! Mwahahahaha!”, but the closest thing I could find is this video of David Attenborough pissing off some wood ants. It was basically like that, only instead of an Englishman with a stick, it was a bird stomping around with its wings spread just being an absolute asshole about everything.
This behavior is actually called anting, and there are two types of anting that birds can engage in. One is just anting, where birds will rub ants all over themselves to get that precious, precious formic acid all up in their feathers. They’ll also do it with mothballs, cigarette butts, and certain sorts of beetles and millipedes. The other one is passive anting, where a particularly lazy bird will find an anthill and just flop down on it with all their feathers spread and puffed and annoy the ants until they hop to and try to make them leave, at which point the bird rubs its wings together and goes “Yeeeeeess.”
They do this to get rid of external parasites, because external parasites are annoying. Ant-eating birds who do this are getting a two-for deal out of it, because they get the ants to empty their acid sacs in a beneficial location (the bird’s feathers) and then get to eat them without having to deal with the acid in their crops, so it’s basically like if your bug-spray or deoderant came in a bacon bottle.
Formica ants get the brunt of this, because they’re super-common and quite frequently spray the acid instead of trying to inject it, so the bird can get itself doused and then preen it into its feathers. Considering the spraying of acid is like the ant way of saying “Oh my god go away you dickhead I hate you we all hate you why are you still here jesus christ what is wrong with you,” we can be reasonably sure that they’re not super-thrilled by this bird behavior. Since the birds keep doing it, we can be reasonably sure that they don’t care about the ants’ feelings.
I can’t stop laughing at the text Why can’t every science book be written like this?
Honestly the mere fact that some people refer to Daddy Long Legs as “harvestmen” is creepier than 90% of all deliberately created horror but like the worst part is that the alternative is calling them Daddy Long Legs
True harvestmen, and not cellar spiders which are the other Daddy Long Legs, are truly omnivorous- known to eat everything from spiders, to fecal matter, to leaves and fungus… But one of the singularly most interesting habits of a particular European species is their almost symbiotic relationship with beehives– particularly man-made beehives. When a bee dies inside the hives, workers will remove the the corpse to just outside the hive just before dark. And the harvestmen? Well, they live up to their name.
So what you’re saying is that they are the grim reaper for bees.
The grim beeper
I need someone to make a Harvestman from this it’s like medieval lore I’m
I’m telling y’all that if you don’t jump around erratically bc a wasp or hornet flies close to you, you’ll have less interaction time with them
If you’re nervous about them (not yknow. allergic. let’s not intentionally misinterpret what I’m saying) ignore them. And I do mean IGNORE. Don’t react.
Also, are you watering or generally handling a source of liquid and they won’t leave you alone? Share some at a distance from yourself. Hell are you eating and they want some? Share it.
Honestly if people treated them with the calmness and affection they show bees they’d have better experiences.
Anyway, have a little plate for the yellowjackets when you picnic. They are eating the bugs that you don’t like so offer them a gift.
Please stop telling me about your allergies. If you gotta bolt bc you could DIE just do it.
Clearly, that means this message is not for you. Move on.
When I’m going to hang out in the yard I usually bring a banana or some other fruit, that I eat right away (because sitting outside and eating fruit is cool) and then I leave the peel/husk/core out someplace, not adjacent to where I’ll be sitting/working. The bees and wasps (and flies) will all zero in on it and have a lil party, and I can do what I’m doing without constant interference. (It’s the same as feeding your pets before you sit down to eat a meal — it distracts them from begging, and honestly a lot of dogs and cats prefer to eat along with their people. I know, it’s odd, but nice.)
Wasps are often more combative in the summer because they’re thirsty. Putting out a little dish of water for them is good. I was in the Spanish mountains one summer and put out a plate of water for the wasps whenever I was bathing, so they didn’t try to drink off me.
Yeah usually if you take a shallow dish out with water and even bits of food (especially fruit) while outside doing activities like reading/swimming/picnics/camping etc you’ll really take the aggression out of most wasps. They’re usually just hungry or thirsty. Just don’t set up camp right next to their nest lol
Imagine showing up to work one day and people are like “jesus fucking christ there’s a corpse in here”, herd you to the back room and everyone who sees you also agrees that there is now a dead body where you are sitting, with the appropriate amount of shock and disgust about it. You figure it’s some kind of a prank that they’re pulling, but also the people that you know aren’t into pranks, or aren’t very good actors, are treating you like a corpse. They go weirdly back and forth between talking about you as if you’re not there, and politely asking you to stay still while they figure out who you’re supposed to call in case of a dead body randomly appearing.
Paramedics show up, study you thoroughly and agree that while they can’t see any apparent sign of death, you are, indeed, dead, and ask you to climb aboard the ambulance. You’re taken to the temporary corpse storage that hospitals have.
On the way there you ask them whether this kind of shit happens often, and while they won’t look at you, the paramedics agree that they’ve never had a talking corpse before, though they won’t question the fact that you’re moving on your own.
You’re eventually led to a morgue, where you’re shown a slab to lay on, and at this point you don’t really even question it, you just climb onto the Corpse Shelf and lay down, maybe have a little nap, with no idea what’s going to happen next.
Then you wake up to someone walking into the morgue, who has the shit scared out of them when you move, and they’re like “dude what the fuck, you’re not supposed to be here, this place is for storing dead bodies” and when you’re like “aw man sorry I thought I was a dead body” they have no idea whether you’re joking and they don’t care, you’re just chased out of there.
And you just kinda go home and take a shower, show up to work normally the next day and nobody questions it.
And basically that’s probably how those ants feel when scientists spray them with the Pheromone That Dead Ants Smell Like, and just hang out at the dead-ant-pile until the smell wears off.
Okay, but mystery chemical spill that makes everyone perceive you as a corpse when you are, in fact, alive, could 100% be a super hero origin story
*30 minutes later realise that haven’t looked up anything about sheep cuz I immediately forgot and spent the past half hour learning about moths cuz I wanted to know what their hair is made of*
By the way, sheep CAN get sunburn just after they’ve been shaved and a moth’s hair is not hair like ours and is actually more similar to really long scales. Did you know some moths don’t even have mouths? Wild
mc1303 