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| Daphnis nerii caterpillar, picture by Amy Huang from Taiwan |
Daphnis
nerii caterpillar
has
a big (fake) blue eye on his front side. What a finesse, for a moth
of the family Sphingidae,
so
often nocturnal
and disquieting!
When
looking for identification across the web, the other
caterpillar
I had found with
a blue eye very similar, was
actually that of Papilio
glaucus, from
the noblest and most
beautiful family of butterflies!
It's
a great example of animal mimicry,
as another
Papilio
testifies,
whose pictures I received (to
tell all the truth, it's
another
sub-species),
as coming directly from Chinese and Japanese paintings, which,
with two
orange (fake) eyes in its
form of caterpillar, from
a frontal point of view
just looks like a snake!
Curious,
and
amazing!
Now,
for the Children's
Virtual Museum of Small Animals
many pictures are coming from the extreme East
Asia,
as well as from South
America,
where
now we know that very
similar spiders
tend
their large, fascinating webs.
Argiope
is
genus name.
 |
| Argiope aemula, by Emma-Huang, Taiwan |
I
have books
about insects and spiders, very useful but, as a self made naturalist
apprentice,
it
is great for me, surfing
the other web, the “world wide”
one, to be able many times to give right answers in few minutes to
questions about animals living so far in the world, just
recalling some elements of my experience and knowledge and writing
some keywords. Amazing!
 |
| Papilio bianor dehaanii, picture by Cindea Hung from Japan |
 |
| Argiope argentata, by Manuela, Colombia |
Sometime,
they
are the children who draw the right guide lines
to understand natural world. It was in primary school, first class,
where, looking and wondering at the details of the magnified pictures
of the insects, the kids at some point said: “So, bees
suck and wasps cut!”
They
had identified as significant the tongue
of bees and the jaws
of wasps, just the same distinction made by the scientists, when
dividing superfamily
Apoidea
from Vespoidea!
 |
| Trigonopsis sp., picture by Cindea Hung from Taiwan |
Some
time later, taking very close
pictures
of the so
called “digger
wasps”
on
flowers, I noticed their long and winding tongue,
almost like butterflies! But, if wasps cut,
so then
they
must be bees!
And
anyone
can actually look
up and verify that the family Sphecidae
belongs to the Apoidea!
Among
the pictures of by my friend Cindea, from
Taiwan,
the one I have chosen for this post is not the closest to the insect,
but it is a
really
great frame,
isn't it?
