I gently squeezed the little green bulb between my teeth, and a lemony flavor flooded my mouth. I savored it for a second – Hmm, not too bad, I can totally see myself adding it to rice or some other bland food. I shook off my arm the remainder of the insects who were aggressively…
Category: Macrophotography
Dwarfs of Lovane
Yesterday I wrote about the Mt. Gorongosa Pygmy Chameleon, a species endemic to a single mountain in central Mozambique. But if you travel towards the southwestern corner of South Africa, you are likely to encounter another lineage of these amazing lizards, the Dwarf Chameleons (Bradypodion). About twenty species of these small but incredibly colorful chameleons…
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…
Armored katydids, or Koringkriek
This week a French translation of my book “Relics” is being officially released in France. The one difference from the original version, other than the language of course, is the cover. I was thrilled to see that the publisher decided to place on it one of my all-time favorite animals, the South African armored katydid…
Life-saving beetles
Growing up in Poland, a country with relatively mild but still not particularly pleasant winters, I was always on the lookout for the first signs of the return of insect life, and one of the most welcome sights in the spring was a beautiful, metallically violet oil beetle (Meloe proscarbeus). I was so used to…
The scariest animal that will never hurt you
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…
The Smaller Majority 