Posts under ‘The Naturalist’

My hands smell a combination of rotting flesh and latex gloves, hours after exhuming a sludge of a month-long-buried Oriental whip snake to pick out its skeleton: its skull pieces, much of the vertebrae, and some ribs have been retrieved with some assistance from a colleague (she had previous experience in sorting caterpillar frass, which [...]

Just a collection of what I’ve managed to rear in recent times:
Pericallia ricini (Family Arctiidae / tiger moths):

Eggs

2nd instar larvae

4th instar larva

Adult

Metanastria hyrtaca (Family Lasiocampidae / lappet moths):

Early instars

Later instars

Adult

Adult

Perina nuda (Family Lymantriidae / tussock moths):

Pre-pupal stage

Pupa

Newly-eclosed adult male

Adult male

Enpinanga borneensis (Family Sphingidae / hawk or Sphinx moths):

Final instar, pre-pupal stage

Adult which unfortunately eclosed [...]

Driven by curiosity and the urge to test the hypothesis that the smaller, similarly brown-mottled but black forlegged mantid was indeed the male of Diego’s species (ok, driven by the sheer excitement of having little Diegos to complete the whole cycle as well), we found and collected one of these, and in a social entomological [...]

With long and graspy legs, nasty jaw-like mandibles and modified appendages through which they inject their prey with venom, these house centipedes look like the epitome of all that’s evil and dangerous in the wilderness at night.
Yet they do no more harm to humans than the average spider – if they do bite at [...]

Okay, so Diego’s a female.
We counted eight abdominal segments when Diego was a nymph, so we took a risk and named it a him even though we knew that we could really only tell when it reached maturity. We also knew that creatures should be its, but it’s got too much character to be [...]

A very pretty male with blue irises:

More photos here.

Marbled forest gecko

Close-up

House centipede

Stick insect

Fulgoroid planthopper nymphs with ‘fibre-optic’ tails

Aside from pins and badges, I have a fetish for collecting dead creatures. Arthropods, mainly, and the odd vertebrate, stink though they may. I love being able to examine them up close, at all angles, an otherwise impossible task were they alive. Likewise with the exuviae, my containers of exoskeletons and skins, and zip-lock pouches [...]