PF PHOTO CONTEST - Creepy-crawlies

[matthyaouw]

Creepy-crawlies
Insecty, spidery, bug-like things please.

Contest Rules:

1. Any digital photo or digitally-scanned photo relevant to the theme will be accepted within the contest period. In case there's a gray area, or you're not sure if the picture is suitable, check with me first.

2. Please resize your digital photo to no more than 650 x 490 or 490 x 650 pixels. You may also crop your picture if you wish. You are also allowed to adjust the brightness and contrast of your picture but these should not dramatically alter the look of the picture. But other than those, any form of picture editing or modification is not allowed. This is a photo contest, not a picture editing/special effect contest. You may add a watermark or your name/nickname to the photo for identification purposes.

3. Upload your photos to any of the photo servers such as imageshack or photobucket. Then post it the relevant contest thread and link your picture using the img command. PM me if you do not know how.

4. Only ONE picture per member per contest. Once a picture is posted, it cannot be changed other than a total withdrawl by that member from that week's photo contest. Exceptions will be made for modification to comply with the rules, such as resizing.

5. At the end of the contest period, I will open a poll and every PF member can vote for the picture they like best.

6. Note that in case we have a large number of entries, I will do the polling in more than one thread. If that's the case, you can vote in each of the polling threads. The photos will be assigned in the polling threads in the order they were submitted.

7. These pictures must be something that you took, not something taken off someone else's photo albums or taken by someone else. I have no way of checking if you did this, so we'll go by the honor system.

8. You can use a picture only once. Once it is used in a contest, it cannot be reused in another contest.

9. Please post only pictures meant for submission in this thread.

 

[turbo]

I hope that I have not previously shown my assassin bug.

 

[~christina~]

I hope that I have not previously shown my assassin bug.

I think you posted that a while back. Was it a close up?

 

[turbo]

I think you posted that a while back. Was it a close up?

Very!

 

[turbo]

The one on Photobucket was 800 pixels wide, so I think it only found its way onto the wildlife thread, not a contest.

 

[edward]

Horned lizard in full camo (horny toad)

http://img26.imageshack.us/img26/1453/scan140014014ju2.jpg

 

[Marzena]

The European garden spider

 

[physics girl phd]

The European garden spider

Wow -- he/she's fat compared to the North American ones I knew! (They used to build webs across the trails we made in the blackberry zone of the vacant lot next door to us... and scare us to no end... especially if you picked a blackberry and one was hiding on it!)

 

[Borek]

Not necesarilly - it is a young specimen, they are more rounded. When they get older, they are slightly thinner. See for example

http://www.bpp.com.pl/IMG/krzyzak.jpg

Unles one lives in the place full of fat flies

I have an embarrass de richesse - not less than 10 pictures to select from. And I can't decide whether to look for creepiness or cuteness.

At least now I know I will not use the picture linked above - one garden spider from our garden is enough

 

[NeoDevin]

Does a lizard count as a creepy crawly?

 

[edward]

Does a lizard count as a creepy crawly?

My wife thinks so.

 

[Ben Niehoff]

The body is about an inch long.

 

[turbo]

That's pretty big for a Black Widow, isn't it? Ought to be a good load of venom in that baby.

 

[matthyaouw]

Sorry Edward, I wouldn't call a lizard a creepy-crawly. I'm thinking more of insects, spiders, millipedes etc...

 

[hypatia]

A group effort for a Nacho Cheese chip

 

[wolram]

A group effort for a Nacho Cheese chip

One small chip for man----------------------

 

[Gokul43201]

One small chip for man----------------------

 

[turbo]

A group effort for a Nacho Cheese chip

"All together! Heave!"

 

[edward]

Sorry Edward, I wouldn't call a lizard a creepy-crawly. I'm thinking more of insects, spiders, millipedes etc...

If you would have ever had one crawl up the inside of your pants leg you might get the picture.

BTW

The word reptile comes from the Latin reptare: to creep and repere: to crawl, so really they are creepy crawlies!

 

[Borek]

If you would have ever had one crawl up the inside of your pants leg you might get the picture.

Do you mean this is inside of your pants?

 

[edward]

Do you mean this is inside of your pants?

Yes and it is a very unpleasnt sensation for people not familiar with it. They go for the first opening or dark place they see to seek a hiding place.

The horned liazard just freezes in place. If it feels threatened it sprays out a fluid from glands behide it's eyes. The thin fluid is colored red with red blood cells. It really messes up a clean shirt.

 

[GeorginaS]

That is excellent.

 

[Andre]

A happy creepy crawling hunny bee

 

[turbo]

She's not creepy, Andre. She's a sight for sore eyes. I would love to have thousands of them in my garden next summer, but they seem to have died off and left the job to tiny bees and bumble-bees.

 

[binzing]

Whubbout a snake? Please please please?

 

[matthyaouw]

Sorry, I've only ever heard creepy-crawly used to describe insects, spiders, millipedes etc.

 

[matthyaouw]

A big ole moth.

 

[Borek]

OK, let's try (creepy) cuteness

That was several years ago when I was breeding mantids. This is my hand and very young Sphodromantis gastrica.

 

[turbo]

That is the very tiniest mantis that I have ever seen. Cute!

 

[Borek]

This is already after one or two moults, so it is not the tiniest possible. Besides, Sphodromantis gastrica is rather huge specie (adults grow up to over 4 inches). Some species (before they get mature) are smaller than fruit flies.

 

[physics girl phd]

I'll admit, I love matthyaouw's moth. Mainly because it brings back bad memories. One apartment I lived in (during grad school) had some old (rotting) mulch and pretty old trees outside... and one year the moths went mad for the place. They always managed to slip in behind me too. Fortunately the cat rather liked to eat them, which helped SLIGHTLY in population control. Still... I killed so many of them that snuck into the house that year.

About the only thing that might be worse was the apartment with roaches in undergrad.

Borek's praying mantis is just darling. :!) We use to collect the egg-pods in fall and place them in our front and back bushes. We watched MANY of them right at the moment of hatching. I just find them darling. (Of course I didn't watch the part that resulted in the egg-pods... the famle biting off the hand of the male!)

 

[Borek]

(Of course I didn't watch the part that resulted in the egg-pods... the famle biting off the hand of the male!)

Urban legend. Sometimes female eats male (it may even start during copulation) but that's much less common than believed. I have read somewhere report of biologist researching population of Mantis religiosa in Czech Republic (?). He have seen over 100 pairs engaged in sex, and not a single case of cannibalism.

Truth is that mantids attack everything that moves and can be eaten. Male is usually smaller and qualifies as a meal, so it is at risk, but not doomed.

 

[turbo]

I may have to buy some mantid egg-cases and set them in my garden this summer. Not the very large ones, because I don't want them to target my bumblebees. Since the honeybee die-off, bumblebees are my best pollinators. Once you have seen an assassin-bug fly off with a bumblebee in its grips, you realize that it's not a good idea to have insect predators that are large enough and effective enough to kill your best pollinators.

 

[Borek]

With mantids that's a trade off, they will eat everything, and at least species that I have seen in action are much better at attacking flying insects than those slowly crawling. It is fast movement that catches mantid attention and triggers attack reflex.

At some point I had a problem with feeding mantids, they were too tiny for even smallest crickets that I could buy and I had no more fruit flies, so I tried to use Chironomidae larvae sold as a fish fodder. The hardest part was to make mantid attack them. It turned out that the best way of doing it was to drop the larva close to the matid - it was very fast movement that triggered the attack.

 

[dlgoff]

I would love to have thousands of them in my garden next summer, but they seem to have died off and left the job to tiny bees and bumble-bees.

Yep. But they are starting to make a little comeback here in Kansas. I saw more last summer in my apple trees than I've seen in years. I'm hopeing this summer will be even better.