Woolly Bear
There comes a time in a man’s life when he realizes that he has posted too many pictures of woolly bear caterpillars.
I’ll let you know if that ever happens to me.
This is “Waldo” from last Monday’s photograph. He actually moves around, though not often and not with any alacrity. It was 6°C outside when I took this photo. This was the highest temp of the day (and week, it snowed again the next day).
I can not get over the fact that these bugs are alive and active during the winter! Tim Eisele sent me a research paper documenting winter-active spiders, and about half a dozen of the species mentioned are found out here. Most of them are only active down to about -2°C but some were active all the way down to -5°C! Those bugs have a fascinating problem: they’ve got really good antifreeze in their blood, but if they eat a bug that has a lower concentration of antifreeze, the digested food can actually freeze in their stomach! How freaking crazy is that? All the way crazy, that’s how crazy!
So! It looks like I’ll be bundling up warm and heading out with my camera to photograph these bugs that are too crazy to come in out of the cold. For now, here’s Waldo. Who’s a cute widdle fuzzy-wuzzy den?
tceisele said,
February 18, 2008 @ 9:32 am
Somehow, I missed the point about their food freezing in their guts the first time I read the paper. What a freakish problem to have!
The entire contents of the Journal of Archnology are online at http://www.americanarachnology.org/JOA_online.html , and all but the most recent year are viewable for free. There are lots of papers with really intriguing titles, like
“Venom spitting by the green lynx spider” in Volume12, No. 3. They are kind of technical, but the actually aren’t that hard to read, particularly if you have your web browser on the “Bug Guide” so that you can look up the species names from the articles and see pictures. The papers also often have really good descriptions of how to catch and rear spiders in the “methods” sections.
JFargo said,
February 19, 2008 @ 7:37 pm
It looks like a colored pipe cleaner.
It’s really cute!