A friend of mine once compared holding a dung beetle in your hand to kissing a dog on the snout – both feel kind of good, until you think of the last thing they have probably been rubbing against. At least with dogs there is some room for other options, but there is no such…
Category: Mozambique
Mozambique Diary: The Abominable Frogman
If frogs tell their children scary stories, one of them certainly must be about the Abominable Frogman, a strange, giant creature that comes in the middle of the night to snatch unsuspecting frogs and take them away. And, like so many scary stories, this one would have a kernel of truth in it, for the…
Mozambique Diary: Manticora redux
Some weeks ago I wrote about the Monster Tiger Beetle (Manticora) that I had found in the savanna of Gorongosa. These insects are powerful predators, hunting grasshoppers and other small invertebrates using their enormous mandibles. The larvae of Manticora are similarly carnivorous, but rather than actively pursuing their prey the way their parents do, they…
Mozambique Diary: Alipes
A couple of weeks ago I was ripping slabs of bark off an old fallen log, an activity that to me ranks among the most pleasurable things one can do, right up there with unwrapping Christmas presents. There is always a chance of finding something incredible – a beautiful cerambycid beetle, a colony of Pyramica,…
Mozambique Diary: I have fallen and I can’t get up
The best part of traveling with a group of biologists in a place like the Cheringoma Plateau is the impossibility of ever being bored. Not only can you witness hilarious and exotic injuries (where else do people get bitten by bats?), but every day brings new discoveries of things you never thought existed. At our…
Mozambique Diary: Heroes, and what bugs them
One early morning, while on the Cheringoma Plateau, an invited mammalogist came running into the camp. “We caught something really good in our traps!”, the mammalogist announced breathlessly, sending the media team that was filming our expedition into a state of frenzied excitement. Everybody rushed to see the mystery animal, whose identity the person refused…
The Smaller Majority 