Of all the animals that you may encounter in a tropical rainforest, none evoke a more visceral, negative reaction in even the most ardent nature lovers than the tailless whipscorpions. They are members of the order Amblypygi, and among all arachnids they are probably the most undeserving of fear or repulsion. To begin, they are…
Category: Behavior
Our top predator
As the days grow shorter and colder, I find myself paying more and more attention to the organisms that I took for granted throughout the entire summer. Suddenly, cricket songs punctuate the unexpectedly chilly nights with hesitation, moths coming to the light on our deck are getting smaller and rarer, and spindly centipedes trapped in…
Dangerous candy
My first visit to Africa was in 1989, when I went to visit some friends in Zimbabwe. Back then the country was still prosperous and democratic, Toni Childs optimistically sang “No more crime in your lifetime, Zimbabwe”, and nothing indicated the darkness it would soon descend into. I spent a few weeks traveling around the…
Lantern bugs in action
If you enjoyed the story of lantern bugs and their assorted visitors, you can see a clip from David Attenborough’s fabulous documentary “Life in the Undergrowth” featuring these remarkable animals. Incidentally, the movie shows the same insect individuals, filmed on the very same tree on which I took some of my photos at La Selva…
The Mystery of Flying Honeydew: A Strange Case of Unabashed Thievery
Yesterday I introduced the amazing lantern bugs and their fast-flying honeydew. I mentioned that ants, animals that often collect honeydew from homopteran insects, were unable to enjoy it because of the speed with which the honeydew drops were expelled. And yet, when Kenji and I started investigating the behavior of lantern bugs in a systematic…
The Smaller Majority 