Some time ago I was driving in Gorongosa when I noticed a large tortoise laying in the middle of the road, stuck upside down in the mud. The animal was alive but had what appeared to be a large wound in the posterior part of its cracked carapace. There were fresh tracks of a civet…
Category: Arachnida
Mozambique Diary: The stuff of dreams
Isn’t it fascinating that the same thing can be the subject of one person’s worst nightmares, and another person’s wildest dreams and desires? Nothing illustrates this point better than the Golden orb spiders (Nephila), which my wife doesn’t even call spiders – they are simply her Nemesis, clearly intent on luring her into their enormous…
A view from the other side
A guest post by Kristin “So, are you afraid of solifugids, too?” my husband asked, questioning me about my life long fear of spiders while writing his first book, The Smaller Majority. Now, I am not your stereotypical girl, revolted by and fearful of insects of all types. I love insects and pride myself on…
A biblical arachnid
In 1837 a small fossilized beetle was discovered in Carboniferous deposits of England, and its description was promptly published in “The Bridgewater treatises on the power, wisdom and goodness of God as manifested in the creation.” Unfortunately, two things were wrong with this publication. As it turned out, the creature was not a beetle, but…
Solifugids – arachnid teddybears (with big teeth)
Like everybody else, I have a soft spot for things that are fuzzy and look at me with expressive, big eyes. But of course being furry and having eyes isn’t necessarily equivalent to being cuddly, as I learned during a painful lesson delivered to me once by a silky anteater, whom I had foolishly picked…
The other whipscorpions
It never ceases to amaze me how excited everybody gets about the prospect of finding life elsewhere in the universe, even if that life is likely to be in a form of thin layer of slime somewhere deep in the rocks, while our own planet is bursting with forms that would be considered figments of…
The Smaller Majority 