The Smaller Majority

Ice-crawlers

Entomologists, unlike birders, usually do not keep life lists of insects, but seeing my first ice crawler (Grylloblattodea) was akin to checking off the first kiwi on a twitcher’s life list. These insects are a strange breed. Only twenty-eight species are known, and they are found only in colder regions of North America and the…

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…

African Tuesday: Being bark

When I first read “Out of Africa”, which to this day remains one of my favorite books, the one thing that left me oddly dissatisfied was the lack of attention to trees of the savanna – their smell and colors, the texture of their bark and, most importantly, all the wonderful creatures that the author must…

What butterflies like

The weather has become so unpleasantly cold that I try not to open my eyes while walking outside, out of fear that my eyeballs will freeze. (I was told that this would happen by my teacher in preschool; she also told me that eating candies makes worms lay eggs in my teeth, and that if…

Life in the season of death

Winter in the Northern Hemisphere – is there anything more unpleasant? To most entomologists living in temperate climates winter is synonymous with the disappearance of everything they love: insect activity and the pleasant buzz of millions of wings, vibrant colors of plants, warm weather. Our beloved animals have long turned to dust, buried themselves into…

Stalk-eyed flies

I really don’t like when organisms that deviate from our narrow, anthropocentric perception of the natural world are described as “bizarre” but, let’s face it, flies of the family Diopsidae sure look that way. They are hypercephalic, which means that their head is extremely expanded in a way that places both their eyes and the…