The Virtual Museum is on the go!

The Children's Virtual Museum of Small Animals is to go, and now professionally!

Tessaratoma papillosa, a bug from Taiwan, with eggs!

I began several years ago taking the pictures from my work in the primary schools and kindergartens of Brescia, the town where I live, and putting them on the web, with the indication of the place, the date, the class which had “discovered” the insect or the spider. Other pictures came from other schools and also individual kids I was in contact with, from Italy and from other countries of the world, as well as videos and drawings. It was a good and interesting stuff, as modern technological tools allow everyone, with a little attention and patience, to take cheap and good images of the little interesting living beings all around us. I added also something by myself, for didactic (what is good to capture kids' imagination and joy of knowing), and tried to put things in order and give possibly some basic news and a simple but correct classification, after having tested it with real children in schools.

Erythrodiplax connata, from Colombia

But the “museum” part of my work on insects – I am not an entomologist, but basically a free lance educator skilled in theatre, storytelling and audiovisuals - was not the professional one, as I was payed for going in schools gardens, making videos and also for a photo exhibition but, for several reasons, not for my job of “webmaster”. So, the Museum has been living till now in alternate periods, with many ideas and functionality always “in progress”, despite of the interest for it coming from many, also distinguished people, the interviews, the articles, the videos and also a small series of ebooks of photography, science and poetry, I wrote connected with it.

From the last year, a great contribution is coming from my Asian correspondents, with a part of an existing international network joining the museum project. So now most news are from Taiwan, Malaysia, Turkey and, from the other part of the world, Colombia: schools and kids, very young and less young people post their pictures on the Facebook groups of the Museum and of the association Terra Insieme (Museum “foster-mother”). Then, periodically, I put some of them in the “rooms”. That is not the best solution - the quality of pictures is “through” Facebook and conversations after a while are difficult to be found – but it's very easy. And sometimes something good happens, as the question if that insect from Malaysia was an ant or not (so we discovered that an ant-mantis exist!) and even maybe the first picture available on all the web of the Pterogeina eurysterna hendel!

A Pterogeina eurysterna hendel, family Platystomatidae? 

As now Terra Insieme is finally going to work, we are thinking of giving the Museum a professional setup, including:

A web site with suitable archives and spaces for visitors, collaborators and schools, with many features impossible on private social networks.

A permanent (if not full time) staff, for re-designing and managing the web mastering, organizing direct workshops in schools and local projects and coordinating linked activities by partners and correspondents, as well as communication, productions and publications.

A scientific committee, not only formal, with true experts attainable.
A technical forum where people can talk about how taking photos and videos properly.

We are asking to other groups and associations for partnerships and contributions, as convinced as we are that sharing is the present and the future of cultural enterprises.

A blue eyed caterpillar!

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?