Beetle go KTKTKTKTKTKTK

Because the moths themselves don’t eat and only live long enough to mate and then starve to death, the entire culture is made up of children and adolescents. The older children raise the younger ones, with families being made up of hatchmates from different years.

Because molts and eventual transformation into a short lived adult happen on a set schedule, families have a cycle— when your oldest set of siblings cocoon to become adults, you wait at the mating grounds and try to adopt their newborns after they pass. If that fails, you take any ‘orphans’ you can find.

Because death and birth are nearly simultaneous, they have a religion based around reincarnation, and infants with markings similar to a parent are often given their name. Claiming the offspring of a beloved family member is vitally important, because you want to be able to protect their soul and keep them close.

Because it’s hard to track the offspring of your male family members, there are sometimes major fights when a family sees an infant with familiar markings in another family’s clutch.

And what is your favourite non ant species of insect/bug?

Favorite species?

Preonolepis imparis, the Winter Ant!

There's a reason I've made a whole comic featuring them and also a video dedicated to them and also have been trying to track their nuptial flight conditions too!

Favorite non-ant...

That one is a bit tougher, would probably be millipedes but I have also been getting into wasps a lot lately, albeit they are ant adjacent!

[VIDEO TAKEN: MAY 15TH, 2026 | Video ID: A video of a grey orb weaver in its web, contrasted by a background of near complete black night, wrapping up prey that was caught in its web /End IDs.]

Lars himself is a researcher and comes from a longer line of researchers-- so the writing is often a bit dry. I found myself zoning out during several of the experiment descriptions, which I feel I could have described in far fewer words, but I understand the need to be comprehensive when you're building a case towards a specific idea.

I will warn, for anyone who wants to pick this up, that the book does often spontaneously veer into descriptions of WWII era accounts, due to Lars wanting to pay proper tribute to the bee scientists during that time, or of descriptions of scientists whose lives did not end well despite their important contributions. I'll be honest, it gave me major whiplash, but not so frequently as to stop reading.

The biggest takeaway for me was Lars' recommendations for helping solitary bees survive these times-- plant native flowers, put up bug hotels, don't keep honeybees because there's enough of them as it is.

The green bee is a striped sweat bee of the Agapostemon genus & the black bee is a leaf cutter bee within the Megachile genus!

The only things that work without rest are machines; literally everything that lives requires rest.

inat:

My wiggly walaphyllium baby girl 🥰 🌿