PhotoS of the Day - Ravenous Bugbladder Beast of Moorepark

[aggienaut]

Came across this fellow on a telephone pole while out strolling about in Moorepark. Actually I went strolling to take photos of kangaroos that were standing picturesquely in a field. I may or may not end up posting those photos, but they weren't as photo worthy as this crazy bastard I noticed on the way home.


It looks like a giant tick!!!! Does anyone have any idea what it is???

And then just a little further on a came across another very large --though substantially less scary looking-- insect (apparently deceased).



Look at the siiize of it! It's like sputnik!

Also I have filthy farmer hands. d:

Comments

[drcuriosity]

It's a discarded ex-cicada. They're usually bigger than that:

http://www.naturephoto-cz.com/photos/others/red-cicada-2650.jpg

That's what we have down here to make all the noise in summer when we don't have any crickets. (Well, New Zealand does, but they're either carnivorous cave-dwellers or are giant herbivorous ones.)

The husks do look a bit like the garthim from The Dark Crystal though, don't they? :-)

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Not familiar with this dark crystal of which you speak but these sure are gnarly looking. And they get bigger? I'm picturing the carnivorous cave dwelling one it be the size of a vw golf. Seems to me like something one would encounter in a D&D setting.

[drcuriosity]

The Dark Crystal being an old Jim Henson film: http://muppet.wikia.com/wiki/Garthim

Every time they shed one of those skins, it's because they've gotten bigger and can't fit inside the old one.

And here's a cave weta:



And here's a giant weta:

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

HOLY FLURPING SHNIDT!!!!!!

[drcuriosity]

It's a good thing they're slow, placid and herbivorous. Because if they weren't, we'd probably have killed them with fire.

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

or been mercilessly slaughtered by them! O:

[missfuzzybunny.livejournal.com]

That is terrifying!

[i-dread.livejournal.com]

I was about to post the same thing, ex-cicada. When my daughter was about 2, she discovered hoards of the little bug shells stuck underneath a picnic table in our backyard. She collected them whenever she found them, and we kept them in a jar in her bedroom. When they came, she was old enough to experience them first hand, in living colour. They didn't seem so magical to her at that point.

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Neat story (:

[fimbrethil.livejournal.com]

Definitely a cicada casing. When they morph in to the stage where they are green and have wings, they leave their old skins behind. We see them all over our fence and yard in the summer.

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

It's amazing they are able to climb out of their old skin and leave their old skin so intact! There was a little hole through which I could see it was hollow but otherwise I couldn't figure out how the interior had managed to so completely vacate the premises!

[fimbrethil.livejournal.com]

It's actually a split down the back. This time lapse video shows how it's done:



I've actually seen this in person and it takes quite a while for the wings to fill out. It's pretty impressive.

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

So weird!

And the fact that they have a 17 year life cycle. Wikipedia was unclear on whatit meant by that -- I'm assuming the eggs just sit in the ground for 17 years? I wonder what the survival rate of the eggs is. Also that would be like a human baby somehow coming into the world hundreds of years after his parents lived.

[drcuriosity]

They live underground as nymphs for most of their life cycle, I gather. Root system sap-suckers.

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

the root about down there for 17 years?

Note: presumably not rooting about in the Australian sense.

[drcuriosity]

Not every variety. I think the 17-year ones are only one specific kind.

Given their diet and their above-ground proclivities in the mating season, you could accurately say they're always after a root, though! ;-)

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Lol. One way or another..

[working-dreamer.livejournal.com]

Insects creep me out - so yeah - even the pics are too close for me. LOL

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

I think I'd be a bit creeped out if I saw this guy trying to sneak up on my, honestly.

[teaberryblue.livejournal.com]

<3 filthy farmer hands. And yup, it's the pre-wing version of a cicada. We had those all over when I was a kid; I used to play with them.

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

I should post my filthy farmer hands on that farmer dating website, it'll be sure to woo the ladies ;)

Also arrgh my back still hurts from the week of heavy lifting. For some reason the farmer doesn't believe in shallow honey supers, yet we lack the boom truck usually used for lifting off deep honey supers. They've been extracting by removing frames frame-by-frame here I guess but that just strikes me as impractically slow --- and NOT practical for emptying the top boxes enough to lift them off to check the lower boxes .... And we caught two swarms on Thursday so I'd LIKE to be going through them all busting queen cells. Greg STILL insists its "not swarming season" which is such a load of bullshit -- he just doesn't want root through the boxes for the QCs. Though I think the avoidance of shallow boxes is the first thing on Trevor's part I'd call "knowing enough about bees to have an opinion .... that is getting in the way."

Especially since unless we radically re-evalutate our trailer placement, many are placed in ways where even if I did have a lifting boom on a pickup, I can't currently drive along both sides of the trailer...

[frozendoll.livejournal.com]

We have those in the summer. It's a cicada. =)

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

They're crazy!