For an entomologist few pleasures in life are greater than arriving in a new geographic area and being stumped by unfamiliar and mysterious insects, often ones that he/she had never suspected existed. I had a moment like this last night, when I ran across a strange, metallic blue insect, about 25 mm long, walking on…
Category: Behavior
Mozambique Diary: The real birds-of-paradise
Early Portuguese and Spanish explorers who visited the island of New Guinea in the 16th century were astounded by magnificent, brilliantly colored birds, whose plumage was used by the locals to adorn their headgear and bodies. European naturalists who examined skins of these birds brought back from New Guinea noticed that all specimens lacked legs,…
Mozambique Diary: A reversal of fortune
Gorongosa National Park is heaven for praying mantids – nowhere else in the world have I seen so many different species or similarly high abundance of these insects. This appears to be a good indicator of the overall condition of this ecosystem, with almost unlimited availability of prey. Usually this means grasshoppers and other insects,…
Mozambique Diary: The Marbled half-piglet
Walking around the Chitengo Camp in Gorongosa, especially after the rain when the earth is soft, I often run into two types of cute, pig-like creatures. Warthogs are the more noticeable ones, digging around for roots and grubs, completely unafraid of the busy activity of the preparations for the opening of the tourist season. But…
Mozambique Diary: It is loud out here
I am back from the first reconnaissance trip to the Cheringoma Plateau in the eastern part of Gorongosa. It was slow going and in nearly all places we were forced to do a lot of road clearing, removing or finding a way around fallen trees, but the rewards were great. The eastern part of the…
African Tuesday: Beware of the snail
I had always been under the impression that snails defended themselves mostly with their calciferous shells, and that otherwise they were pretty vulnerable creatures. That changed when I ran across an interesting encounter between a pulmonate snail and a predatory ground beetle (Carabidae: Anthiinae) in the rainforest of Atewa plateau in southeastern Ghana. I did…
The Smaller Majority 