The Crane Fly

Way back in the day, Shakespeare said that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. You probably recognize this as a quote from a play about two infatuated rich kids who make a suicide pact because their parents don't get along (for some reason, their respective servants also don't like each other). Hey teenagers: want to get Ro-Ro & J-WoW banned from your school? Tell an administrator that Tybalt and Mercutio were BULLYING each other! I have a hard time with the idea that Shakey (or the woman who wrote all his plays - whoa!) was oblivious enough to the power of suggestion to really believe that anyone would make a bouquet out of "rotty fart-nettles" or "dookie-stink flowers" if the word "rose" had instead been passed over. Some other flowers you don't often see on the florist's delivery list: monkey-faced pansies (in flower-language, these say it's not you, it's me...in that I don't find you attractive), black-eyed susans (sorry about our last fight), bleeding hearts (everyone is entitled to their opinions and you are apparently entitled to the wrong ones), naked ladies (let's not make this relationship into more than it is), and cock's combs (the pharmacy sells a shampoo that'll clear that right up). However, I do think that a 13 year old rich girl with feud-prone (and dowry-hungry?) parents in an environment where gangs of other well-heeled teenagers walk around with swords and kill each other (sometimes for pretty minor slights) might be misguidedly idealistic enough to believe this.

I have many nicknames, but I prefer to be called Crane Fly. You
know, like the bird? You might notice that I'm one leg short of a
six-pack. This is the result of a defensive strategy called autotomy,
where limbs are easily detatched. I assure you that the
photographer had nothing to do with this, though.

Like flowers, names also affect how people view bugs (is it a Roly-Poly or a Woodlouse?). In my opinion, one of the most interesting instances of bug name-confusion is that of the "Daddy Long-Legs." Due to the magic of time, geography, and linguistic evolution in general, the term "Daddy Long-Legs" is used to identify 3 very different bugs (perhaps more?).

I grew up using "Daddy Long Legs" to refer to Harvestmen. If you're not familiar with these creatures, here are some quick facts. Their chelicerae (the stumpy face-arms that spiders' fangs are mounted on) typically bear tiny crabby-claws instead of fangs. Taxonomically, they're Opiliones - they're typically considered to be more closely related to mites and scorpions than spiders. Relative to their body length, they have some of the longest penises in the animal kingdom - like a bunch of little Ron Jeremys. And since you won't stop asking me about Harvestman penises, the (inherently incomplete) fossil record has Harvestmen as the first land animals to dress to the left or right.

 

So, obviously, I didn't take this lovely photo of a

Harvestman. I realize that it's kind of lame to use a

ShutterStock photo here and I think my laziness may

have offended some Harvestmen who don't deserve

the injustice of my neglect. It's worth noting though,

that the returns from searching ShutterStock for

"Harvestman" include a picture of a Crane Fly and a

picture of a Cellar Spider at the bottom of the first page

and searching for "Daddy Long Legs" returns this

pic followed by three pics of Crane Flies.



We Cellar Spiders don't have as many nicknames as
Crane Flies. But we do have other things going for
us - for example, haunting your nightmares!
Picture, if you will, you're a 10 year old you, holding
hands with your elementary school crush...something
catches your eye...when you look back over, you're
now holding hands with a giant ME! But your legs
aren't working and I'm about to go CRAZY!
Sweet dreams!

But as it turns out, not everyone who says "Daddy Long Legs" is referring to Harvestmen. This term can also refer to Cellar Spiders (Pholcids, such as the female Pholcus phalangioides shown at right) and Crane Flies. This over-use of a silly name has had the obvious result: confusion.

One of the most widely known bug myths is that Harvestmen ("Daddy Long Legs") are actually the most poisonous types of spiders, but their fangs are too small to bite people. This is wrong for at least two reasons - which would normally make it right, especially if you're discussing current events with someone who gets all their news from a source that seeks to merely validate the existing opinions of its target audience. The first reason is that Harvestmen aren't spiders, don't have fangs, and aren't poisonous - this myth actually is about Cellar Spiders, but it's been applied to Harvestmen. A version of this myth has also been applied to Crane Flies, but to a much lesser extent. The second reason is that, even if you're talking about Cellar Spiders, it's incorrect. In the early 20th Century, it was reasoned, rather than researched, that because Cellar Spiders commonly eat other spiders, they must be the most venomous (the venomousest?). As it turns out, their venom works well enough to get the job done on spiders and other basement bugs, but is fairly innocuous to people. Further, an adult's fangs are able to bite and deliver that venom to a human. 


When it comes to biting, Crane Flies are also often misunderstood. Many people reason that since they look like giant mosquitoes, they must be capable of giving you a giant mosquito-bite. Luckily, if you're bite-prone like me, this is very incorrect. Crane Flies do not have biting, piercing or siphoning mouth parts (they also don't have French-kissing mouth parts, but don't ask my how I know this...). Most Crane Flies do not eat at all as adults. The relative few that do eat as adults prefer flower nectar to blood.

But back on the naming thing - when it comes to strange nicknames, Crane Flies should win some sort of award. The most common pseudonyms I've come accross for Crane Flies include "Mosquito Hawk," "Skeeter Eater" and similar variations. "Skeeter Eater" is just misleading since, if they eat anything at all, it isn't mosquitos. I kind of like "Mosquito Hawk," but this name can also be misleading. A less common name is "Gallinipper." I'm not sure if this name is supposed to imply that Crane Flies bite chickens or just that they're bird-sized mosquitoids, but it's a funny one. Another name, which I suspect evolved from "Gallinipper," is "Gollywhopper." Gee-willikers - I think maybe Dennis the Menace froze a "Gollywhopper" into an ice cube to plant in Mr. Wilson's lemonade! This, of course, would have landed him straight in juvie. There are many species of large Crane Flies, like the one photographed here. But there are also many species of small, more mosquito-sized Crane Flies. Because of many of these small species' flight patterns and habit of dancing around like a little kid who has to pee, once they land, they're sometimes known as "Bobbing Gnats." Their subterranean, often semi-aquatic, larvae also go by a unique name: Leatherjackets. If you do a Google search for "leatherjacket," big-G will insist that surely you would prefer to see "leather jacket." But a few pics of these lovely little goons will still pop up among candid shots of Georgina Sparks and Nicole Richie.

This Crane Fly is definitely from the genus Tipula, but it's definitely not T. oleracea or T. paludosa - which are two common pest species imported from Europe. The larvae of these species (which look like leathery grubs) feed on the roots of grasses and cereals. By cereals, I mean things like barley and wheat - not so much Cookie Crisp. Speaking of which, did you ever actually try to eat the "balanced breakfast" that General Mills would flash at you? Most kids simply can't eat that much food (needed to offset the bowl full of cookies that jr. just ate for breakfast) because most kids simply shouldn't be eating Cookie Crisp (cue: childhood obesity). And since we're talking about our various Cookie Crisp grievances, the Cookie Crook (maybe his dog Chip, too) needs to get a life coach or something, because nothing about his M.O. makes sense (why are you always trying to steal cookies from a police officer?!). Identifying Crane Flies to the species level can be difficult because there are so very many of them (500-1000 North American species). Some of them are more easily identifiable by unique markings or bright colors, but that's not the case for this one. He's a pretty good match for a male Tipula paterifera (wing venation, number & color of antenna segments, body coloration & markings, thoracic architecture, layout of facial features, etc.), but he could be a better match for something else and I'm not going to attempt a more definitive classification.

The halteres act as vibrational gyroscopes. During flight, the Crane
Fly flaps them vigorously, causing them to vibrate. Like a spinning
gyroscope's angular momentum causes it to resist off-axis
movement, vibrational waves carry a sort of angular momentum,
as well. They typically vibrate their halteres so that each one's axis
of vibration is perpendicular to the other and the length of the fly.
Think of looking into the fly's face - from this view, each haltere
will vibrate along the shape of a backslash or forward-slash...Now
that you're all asleep, I'll be quietly robbing you...and apparently
making a public, internet confession! Dang-it! Total Cookie Crook
move!

One cool thing you might notice in some of these pictures are the little doo-dads poking out where the Crane Fly's hind wings are supposed to be. These are called halteres. They're common to all flies and their kin, and are believed to be evolved from the hind wings of some ancestral bug. Crane Flies have exaggeratedly long halteres to match their other exaggerated proportions. Crane Flies are not considered to be good fliers (especially compared to some of their future-tech-packed relatives, such as House Flies), but they do better than one would otherwise expect. This is because the halteres aid greatly in flight stabilization  especially in controlling pitch and yaw (for you aviation enthusiasts).

So now that you're no longer afraid of Crane Flies or Harvestment ("fear, itself!" Am I right, FDR? Up top!) you can now go out and appreciate these more. The one I caught is a bit drab, but the close-up view is pretty interesting. You can check out more pics of this Crane Fly, including some even closer up, in my Flickr photogallery. Unfortunately, you might also be more afraid than you were before of Cellar Spiders. Despite their not-very-vemomousness, this probably isn't a bad thing because they're creepers. When I imagine what kinds of things they would say, it's usually some superposition of The White Cobra (who threatened to always be lurking just out of sight, on a season 23 SNL skit) and The Gravemind (the malevolent "monument to all your sins" who spoke only in rhyme, in the Halo videogames). I'll eventually get around to doing a full post on them.

Thanks for reading! Comments always appreciated!

They call me quiet girl. But I'm a riot, yeah. Maybe Jolisa - that's not my name! That's not my name!

 - The Ting Tings, 2008

The Blacktailed Red Sheetweaver

The Blacktailed Red Sheetweaver is a very small (~3mm), strange looking spider and their long name reflects this. They have a black tubercle (bump) at the end of their abdomens and their red jammies are quite striking. The crimson may look good on me (despite my wife's insistence that I should dress for my winter-spring skin palette), but it doesn't make for good camouflage in grasses and shrubbery (click the link!). Maybe their small size and the fact that they're passive hunters eliminates the need for much camouflage. The fact-checkers are telling me that this is the first spider I've written about who is a passive hunter, so let me explain this. A passive hunter is one that lies in wait for its prey, rather than going out and chasing it down. Blacktailed Red Sheetweavers have an interesting web design - no flying toasters or flashing text (When was the last time you read a book on web design, Brian? 1998!?).  Their webs are made up of randomly-strung stopping-strands above a loosely woven sheet. The stopping strands knock little bugs out of the air and onto the top of the sheet, through which, they are bitten by the upside-down hanging spider (this is OK though, as nothing done through a hole in this sheet actually counts). The Blacktailed Red Sheetweaver actually spends most of its life upside down - you'll notice this in this post's pictures, as well as the pictures in their Flickr photo-set (I didn't just rotate them weird).


For a single girl, Florinda thought she had it all: a web all her own in a trendy
part of the lawn, all the gnats and little flies that she could eat (pictured!), and
her dream job writing for a women's-interest magazine. But she was about to
find out how much more there is to life! Because a chance meeting with Mr. Right
is about to turn her whole world upside down. When an impulse wedding leads
to a high-profile photo shoot and instant internet stardom, they just might find
that their spacious web in a high rise pepper plant gets a little too small for their
egos!...Starring: Meryl Streep and Tommy Lee Jones!


The Blacktailed Red Sheetweaver, or Florinda coccinea, is not considered to be a common spider species. Before last summer, I had never seen them in my yard or garden (yarden?). So I believe that the female I saw in my lawn in July is the same female that had shacked up in my Jamaican Hot Scotchbonnet pepper plant in August.

As spider species go, males are either about the same size as females, or the males are much smaller (those guys prefer a woman with some meat). For a female spider, it's common for a similarly sized male to make its own web adjacent to her's, or for a tiny male to live in the female's web - mostly on the periphery. But it's not common for a male and a female of similar size to share a web and truly cohabitate. By cohabitating, I mean that the male shares the web for a longer term than courting and mating requires, and it's not just her web that he's crashing in - he actually takes some responsibility for constructing, cleaning and maintaining the web (uncommon, am I right ladies!?). But this is the case for the Blacktailed Red Sheetweaver.

As I observed this pair last August, it occurred to me that, although they were living together, the female wasn't wearing a ring. This concerned me greatly because, not only were they living in sin, but they were also overpaying in income tax by not being able to take advantage of the joint-filer deduction! So, having become an ordained minister in the online Universal Life Church some years ago, I performed their marital rites (I'm pretty sure I had their permission) with the family of (already married) Mourning Doves (probably mourning their loss of independence, am I right guys!?) that live under my porch as witnesses. With that out of the way, I put them into a container so that I could observe them more and get some good pics of them (honeymoon pics?).



The female Blacktailed Red Sheetweaver pictured above wants to try out some
new coloration this season. She looks in her closet every morning and sighs over
her form-flattering, but monochromatic, wardrobe. Plus, that B* (or is she a bee?)
that she's always in competition with at the magazine she writes for just wrote an
article saying that black spots were 2000-and-late!



I've found that many web building spiders have a hard time walking on flat surfaces. But usually when I see this, it's a large female spider with a huge abdomen that she can't lift (the phrase of the week is: Yo mamma's butt is sooooo big, that when she sits down...she gets taller! I hope you liked that one because you'll probably hear this phrase again in a future post). I don't believe that this was the case for these two, but they had a hard time getting their footing. I ended up adding some natural material to their photo-booth container and giving them some time to web-up their new scaffolding. When I returned, I found them settled in and upside down in their newly-webbed  container (because they were just married...you might need to say that out loud to get it).

But I believe that these two spiders were in the middle of a little spat. Now as anyone who's lived with a significant other knows, it's not always as pleasant and agreeable as what was depicted in The Honeymooners - with their frequent, romantically-charged discussions about space travel and lunar exploration (perhaps this is not the timeliest reference...you might have to ask your parents about this joke. Better yet, ask your grandparents. If Mee-maw & Pappy aren't still with us or aren't from here, your best bet will be any white person in a retirement home - they'll know what's up). So I was doing that awkward thing where you're obviously standing right there but you're pretending not to hear the fight that's going on next to you, hoping that the bickering couple will realize how rude they're being...Anyway, the gist was that she was upset about having to move to a new place without a lot of notice and, of course, she wanted (him) to repaint it. But neither of them really knew how long they would be there for - blah, blah, blah. Eventually I just tried to tune it out. But I could tell that the Mourning Doves felt super awkward.



The male Blacktailed Red Sheetweaver pictuerd above doesn't understand why
the female wants to go and spend a bunch of money on a whole new wardrobe.
He thinks she looks great in what she has! And besides, crimson with a black
dot is the look that defines the spider he fell in love with...But when was the last
time he told her so?



Then, at some point, I accidentally jostled their circular container and one of them started running along the web spun around the edge. He ran around the circle until he got close to his wife, where he stopped. But then she started running the same circuit. They did this about 10 times - each one successively running around the same track while the other waited in place. They looked like a Newton's Cradle pendulum or like they were practicing for a relay race (but there was no batton - far out!). They may have just been disagreeing on who had to sleep on the couch, but continually running away and avoiding each other is a tiresome way to not resolve a fight.

All that running was really making it hard for me to take good pictures. So I eventually butted in and told them their business.

Enter: Brian, Bug Therapist

So we all sat down and I played marriage counselor. At first, they both said the standard stuff: she thought marriage would be different and he thinks she's changed, he thinks she spends too much money but she feels like he doesn't treat her like a partner financially, you know. So we ended up having one of those long Venus & Mars, Love & Respect, 5 Love Languages discussions. By the time I let them go, I think they were finally ready to stop holding each other accountable for their own baggage, they were able to articulate their expectations to one another (guys - nothing helps a woman understand what's important to you like saying nothing; ladies - nothing helps a man appreciate your expectations like griping to your girlfriends), and rather than treating each other how they would want to be treated, they finally started treating each other how the other wanted to be treated (I am so Steve Carell!...Why isn't anyone laughing? Oh, I guess no one saw Hope Springs. I mean, I didn't. But I heard that Meryl Streep and Tommy Lee Jones were adorable together).

All I want for my birthday is a big-booty ho
 - Tauheed Epps (AKA: 2 Chainz, formerly Tity Boy)

The Salt-Marsh Caterpillar

Turning away for a picture is so hipster-emo. The only
way you could have squeezed more emo juice out of that
hipster rutabaga (a very indie & authentic root vegetable,
indeed) is if you had taken the pic yourself!

Despite the title, this week's post is not about a caterpillar - it's about a moth...a moth with a sort of Failure To Launch dilemma. If you didn't see Failure To Launch (and I'm sure many of you didn't), the gist is this. An aging Matthew McConaughey (still riding high from his critically acclaimed success, Tiptoes) is a 35 year old who lives in his parents' basement. Greatly chagrined, his parents (how long did it take them to notice that their son was 35?) hire a sort-of life-lessons educator/con-woman to give him some confidence and get him out of their house. This strategy gets Matt's dad (played by Terry Bradshaw, who is theatrically out of his element when he's not doing Shakespeare) off the hook for actually having to talk to his son. The film's educatrix is played by an unfortunately Sarah-Jessica-Parker-like Sarah Jessica Parker. SJP's teaching style (which I presume that she drew from her experience delivering thermodynamics lectures on 3-2-1 Contact!) is basically to trick the mark into thinking that they're dating. Also, Bradley Cooper stepped out of his comfort-zone to play a DB...but the details aren't that important. Basically, Failure To Launch is about a grown-up who hasn't grown up - he still identifies and lives more or less like an adolescent. I know I'm breaking with tradition here, by referencing a lousy film that I haven't seen. But if I had to guess (and I am informed that I, in fact, do have to guess), I'd posit that Failure ends with some personal growth and Matt & Sarah working things out...probably in a fairly unrealistic way (a cursory look at the film's Wikipedia entry seems to confirm this). I'd also bet that the personal growth didn't even require Gary Oldman to scootch around on his knees while trying to make his arms look shorter - because there are apparently no actual little people who are interested in acting (I know it's tough to make a Tiptoes reference when no one - at all - has seen Tiptoes, but I think I got the point across).

You may recall from my September 2012 post on the Hickory Horned Devil (NYT called it "compelling") that some caterpillars are so unique that they get their own name, separate from the moth or butterfly that they pupate into. But most caterpillars, like the Tiger Swallowtail caterpillar, just go by the name of their butterfly or moth - even if they are very interesting, themselves. The Salt-Marsh Caterpillar's situation is obviously different and a bit perplexing. While it's not unfair to call the Salt-Marsh Caterpillar caterpillar less than remarkable, the Salt-Marsh Caterpillar moth is actually very nice looking and, in my opinion, has some potential (you know, moth-potential...obviously). The Salt-Marsh Caterpillar moth doesn't see it that way, though. It's not terribly unusual, especially with the recession, that the Salt-Marsh Caterpillar would have some trouble getting its feet on the ground. But the issue here goes further. Estigmene acrea is a moth who feels that its better days are behind it. So, despite it's obviously inconsistent life situation, it continues to define itself as a high school football champion, or a frat-guy who still visits campus when the frosh are pledging, or a more subtle but similarly self-deluded female archetype (for example, referring to her manager's manager at work as her grand-big...does this ever happen?).

Salt-Marsh Caterpillar moths don't know when to say
when! I took this pic of one nursing a hangover after the
2012 Gathering of the Juggalos. Days after the event, she
was still all made up.

I plan to confront the Salt-Marsh Caterpillar about these issues shortly (hopefully it will go much more Oprah-Barak than Phil-Deena). But first, I'd like to come clean about my own past and tell a story about my own history in the care of bugs.

When I was a larva myself (around 6 years old), I was greatly dismayed at the state of health of the bugs I was finding on my porch (it was often Carpenter Bees on the Pooorch). This is why I founded the Bug Acupuncture and Rehabilitation Facility (BARF) (although much of the acupuncture would have been deemed trans-visceral and post-mortem). I ended up having to shut down the acupuncture operation after the IRS decided that the shadow boxes I was using provided me too much personal benefit to be claimed as a business expense (cops: come and try to snatch my crops...also my mounted insect collection. Luckily though, they left my old Cypress Hill CDs alone). What do you expect? Kindergarten was rough for me; I had fallen in with the wrong crowd (you know, nose-picking & temper-tantrums). Tax fraud was my third strike - bit I did my time (the judge gave me 10 minutes in the corner and I had to go to bed early).

So the bug hospital (BARF) didn't last...but, considering that most of the procedures we performed on live bugs involved little bits of Scotch tape "borrowed" from my mom (she ended up not wanting them back), I'm not sure that the net value of medical services available to the insect community diminished all that much following the bankruptcy proceedings and subsequent sell-off. Also, most of the bugs who weren't already locked in to Kaiser had lousy HMOs - how is a 6-year-old (who's parents still won't get him a fax machine) supposed to deal with all those cheap-o, denial-first plans?

The other inmates at my white-collar time-out facility told me that I probably would have been better off going into bug health insurance - but I wasn't in it for the money (I can't stand Jessie J, BTW. Also, have you seen her dance? If I may speak to her directly for a moment: You're an attractive lady JJ - work with that, not against it...well, why wouldn't I assume that she reads BugsIRL?).

Anyway, despite my (inauspicious) start in bug-medicine, I've lately been having more success in bug-counseling (see Hickory Horned Devil). So, as counseling is more and more becoming a cash-only business (I won't have to deal with non-competitive -  too often, criminally so -  health insurance companies!) with a much lower barrier to entry than some other health professions, it seems that all I need to do is hang up my e-certificate (click for degrees - I am a Phoenix!) and put a sign on my front door that says "Bug Therapy" (Whoa! Nice King's Speech ref, Brian! But I wonder what sorts of callers would come a'callin' if I actually put that sign up...probably my HOA, mostly).

So here goes - intervention time!

Listen Salt-Marsh Caterpillar (ugh, I can't even say that to her face! It's like addressing a 40-year-old who still goes by Timmy - or worse, T-Money!). We've known each other for a while and we've been through some stuff, but it's time for you to get yourself together! I don't know why your parents let you live in their basement for so long, or why your managers are always so mean to you, but it's grown-up time and you're late to the party.

Living somewhere that's more "chill" is not a
career path, in and of itself (even in Boulder).

Let's start off by talking about job stuff. I know that you've spent a lot of time pursuing some apparent dead ends. It's important to find some satisfaction in your work, but I think your problem is generally that you've been looking in the wrong places - or perhaps that you've been looking, with a skewed sense of your own talents, for something that strikes you as easy. I think maybe this pattern has continued a little too long in part because your false-starts were too easy to explain away. For example: seminary isn't for everyone (as I recall, your feelings changed dramatically when you realized that pastors don't just work one day a week), who knew that barber-college would be so expensive (were the other stylists underwhelmed by your bowl & clippers technique?), you spent a whole evening on that business plan but maybe it just wasn't clear how having your band there full time would benefit Pizza Hut, also...well I don't know how you flunked out of those free improv classes you signed up for...I could go on, but do you see that these are getting harder to explain away? It's become obvious to everyone around you that the real problem is something inside you - not fast-food management trainees that lack vision and not Yoga schools that frown on creativity.

But we've also got to have a conversation about your family - Arctiidae, the Tiger Moths (please don't Teresa me and screech profanities because I brought up your family). I don't want to blame them - your artistic, educational, and career path false starts are not their fault. But they are enablers. They make it alright for you and too many of your kin to just not grow up! I know that most of you eat grasses and low crops that someone else grew (we don't need to have a "47%" conversation here), but even those of you who feed on trees just go for the low-hanging fruit (such as apples)! Take your sister, for example: the Banded Woolybear (Isia isabella). Calling her a "woolybear" was cute when she was a larva, but she's a moth now. Further, who uses their name to advertise their band? BTW, have any of you told her that the influences on rap music are far too tenuous for a rag-time/hip-hop band to make any sense to people (let alone, sound anything less than...confused)?

Do you want another example? How about your cousin - Apantesis virgo, the Virgin Tiger Moth. He always was kind of a weenie. But his more recent boycott of anything that reminds him of Steve Carrell is just pathetic. Or how about your other cousin - Hyphantria cunea, the Fall Web Worm? I know you were always impressed with him, but living in a pup-tent in his parents' back yard neither makes him independent, nor a trailblazing outdoorsman.

This is the only life you're going to get, Salt-Marsh (yeah, yeah - I remember when you were a Buddhist...for like, a week! So don't even!)! By this point, you're probably never going to make it as a professional musician or entertainer - I think you'll be much happier with other aspects of your life once you can come to terms with that. That doesn't mean that those things can't be a fun hobby! But as long as you're focused on that stuff, you'll keep missing out on the important things. You still have time to make something of yourself, but life is short (especially yours: 6 weeks is normal in the mid-Atlantic) and the days are getting colder. I believe in your potential, Salt-Marsh. But it's time to apply that potential - preferably to something productive. But failing that: to something that allows you to support yourself, at a minimum.

Just one thing though...Whatever it is that you end up accomplishing: please don't let it involve laying 1200 eggs on my potatoes!

A girl who is warm and humanly during the day. A classy girl who know how to enjoy the freedom of a cup of coffee...Your older brother is Gangnam Style.
 - Psy, 2012

Excuses, excuses...

Just like Looney Tunes and Disney characters, the jumping
spider Platycryptus undatus knows that the difference
between androgyny and femininity is long, pretty
eyelashes.

To all my loyal readers: thanks for continuing to check back.

BugsIRL is not on hiatus and has not been abandoned. I want to reassure everyone that, although it's been a couple of weeks, I have written a truly marvelous post, which the margin is too narrow to contain...

Seriously, Brian? Your best excuse is a math joke? Lame.

Well, if Fermat and his last theorem (which few mathematicians believe he actually had a satisfactory proof of) aren't your cup of grande, iced, skinny cinnamon-dolce latte, then maybe you'll prefer next week's post (was supposed to be last week's post) about a moth who needs to freaking grow up already, and my own experiences in the bug health-care system. Until then, please enjoy past posts and my gallery of lovely pictures.

aⁿ + bⁿ = cⁿ, n>2?
 - math