The Smaller Majority

How to swim on dry land

Namibia is one of the driest places on the planet. It is home to the Namib Desert, the oldest perpetually dry place on Earth, which has endured arid conditions for at least the last 55 million years. Most places in the Namib receive less than 10 mm of rain per year, some even less, and…

Devil’s got a pretty face

Many things have bitten, pinched, stung, or jabbed me over the years, but the absolute champions in delivering the most memorable, painful experience are pretty little insects known as the slug caterpillars. They are larvae of equally handsome moths, members of the family Limacodidae. The body of most limacodid caterpillars is covered with long, brittle…

Wax-tail hopper

One day last year, when I was in Costa Rica’s Barbilla National Park, the manager of the park came to me and said that he had just found the strangest “mariposa nocturna.” What he showed me sitting on one of the beams of the station’s building was indeed strange, but it wasn’t a moth –…

The eventual usefulness of stuff

I admit it, I am a pack rat. Or at least it may appear so to the untrained eye. I hate throwing things away, but empty orange juice bottles can be used to make great flash diffusers; one of the dozens of loose, mismatched screws will eventually prove itself priceless by fixing my tripod head;…

The mantis wasp

Mantis wasps (Torymidae: Podagrion) are tiny, parasitoid wasps that develop in preying mantis’ egg masses, or oothecae. Each developing wasp larva consumes a single egg in the ootheca (which can contain several hundred eggs), but in some areas the number of these insects can be so high that it is a miracle that any mantids…

Macro lenses: shorter is better (often)

What is the best lens for macrophotography? In an earlier post I argued that long lenses, 100mm and more, are great for photographing small subjects that are easy to scare off, and need to be photographed from a distance. They are also handy if you want to isolate your subject from its background. But what…