The Smaller Majority

More babies

Earlier today Kristin was reading on the couch, when she noticed a small insect crawling up the wall. “It is either a very small mantis or an assassin bug”, she opined, exhibiting some pretty good entomological expertise. I was not expecting to see either but, sure enough, it was a small praying mantis. Then we…

Predatory katydids

Earlier this week I spent a couple of days in Philadelphia, visiting my Holy Shrine, the Orthoptera collection at the Academy of Natural Sciences. I was giving a talk at a meeting of the American Entomological Society (not to be confused with its much younger, up-and-coming offshoot, the Entomological Society of America.) It was also…

A bump in the road

I have been photographing earwigs recently, and this reminded me of another group of hexapods, the members of which often have big, pincer-like cerci, the diplurans. “I’ll write a post about them”, I thought, “now, let’s see what kind of pictures I have.” I started looking and located a bunch of shots of diplurans that…

A biblical arachnid

In 1837 a small fossilized beetle was discovered in Carboniferous deposits of England, and its description was promptly published in “The Bridgewater treatises on the power, wisdom and goodness of God as manifested in the creation.” Unfortunately, two things were wrong with this publication. As it turned out, the creature was not a beetle, but…

What happens on the fourth Thursday of November

The fourth Thursday of November is upon us, and this can mean only one thing – winter moths are coming! A few days ago, while trying to decide if this year we should have a turkey or two turkeys for dinner, Kristin looked up from the menu list she was working on and said, “Thanksgiving moths…

No pockets, no problem

I was walking to my car earlier today and reached into my pocket to get the car keys. While pulling them out I spilled everything that was in it: some change, a couple of business cards, my office keys. And I thought: where did people put these things before the invention of pockets? Of course,…