The Smaller Majority

Upside-down world

“Men it appears would rather believe than know” wrote E.O. Wilson in his seminal book “On human nature”, and this sad truth is evident in many aspects of our life, including, strangely, the world of nature photography. One of my pet peeves has always been the tendency of some editors to rotate pictures of animals…

Tasty silk weavers

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…

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…

Pygmies of Mt. Gorongosa

“You should not be there at night,” said Tonga, “it is not recommended.” Since doing things that are not recommended is what I like to do, I dully noted my assistant’s objection, waved him goodbye, and began a hike towards the top of Mt. Gorongosa. I was in Mozambique, a member of a group of…

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…

Never too late to learn

The Cambridge Entomological Club meets every month at Harvard University, and always has interesting speakers who regale its members with tales of adventure and insects. Last night our speaker was John Himmelman, a renowned naturalist and author of many children’s books and field guides, including two on singing insects of the Northeast. It was a…