actinotroch

Skin-piercing blood-sucking moths V: Attacks on man by 5 Calyptra spp. (Lepidoptera, Noctuidae) in S and SE Asia

In a chronology of 11 cases, male adults of scarce C. bicolor, C. fasciata, C. ophideroides, C. parva and C. pseudobicolor are proved for the first time to attack man (the author) and pierce the skin to suck blood under natural conditions in the field. […]

Sewaddle, Swadloon, and Leavanny? Don’t be silly, those are just a

do not particularly resemble leaves

themed around sewing together leaves to protect their young

Leavanny has apocritan-like proportions (the "wasp waist")

possesses larval and pupal stages; while Pokemon has omitted the pupal stage from various lines based on holometabolous insects, I don't believe they've ever given a pupal stage to a bug line that doesn't have one IRL (whirlipede doesn't count it's just curled up ;P)

(Sources - 1, 2, 3, 4)

Order: Ixodida

Common Name: “ticks”

Families: 3 - Ixodidae (“hard ticks”), Argasidae (“soft ticks”), and Nuttalliellidae

Anatomy: completely fused cephalothorax and abdomen give an ovoid/pear-shaped appearance; body becomes engorged with blood when they feed; hard ticks have a beak-like structure at the front containing the mouthparts, whereas soft ticks have their mouthparts on the underside of their bodies

Diet: vertebrate blood

Habitat: terrestrial habitats worldwide, especially in warm, humid climates

Evolved in: Early Cretaceous

Propaganda under the cut:

Negative human perception of parasites, in addition to the typically small size of the latter, has hindered the conservation of rare parasites and actually has decreased the abundance of certain species. Few, if any, parasites rank lower on the human acceptance scale than ticks. The common practice of intentional parasite removal, either directly or by the administration of parasiticides, often seems justified if the survival of a host species is at stake. This impinges on the frequently posed question, "Of what use are ticks?" Given their blood-feeding habit and the numerous pathogens they transmit, most people would instinctively answer "none." However, ticks (and other parasites) are an integral component of healthy ecosystems and have important roles in nature, some of which may still be incompletely understood.... Ticks also are proving to be storehouses of useful biochemicals. Medicinal uses of purified tick anticoagulants have been demonstrated recently. In fact, a plethora of pharmaceutically active compounds are currently being isolated from ticks, thereby providing an incentive for drug companies and researchers to initiate further investigations. [...] These and related tick-derived compounds currently under investigation suggest that beneficial uses of such products in veterinary and health care fields are on the horizon. On the lighter side, ticks or analogies of them have entertained some of us by starring in feature films such as Ticks and in the cartoon The Tick. Moreover, the colors and patterns of some ticks are aesthetically pleasing; these are unusual and incompletely understood traits for ectoparasites.

idk just the last paragraph, the last reason they could come up with to convey to people why they should find value in some of the world's most hated animals...

Because they can be beautiful

Half a minute after the injection of CCK-4, we experienced the beginning of what was to be a full-blown panic attack. The symptoms were intense anxiety, with a fear of dying, and a strange sense of the world sliding away, accompanied by palpitations, sweating, and faintness. The attack peaked after 5–8 min, and then gradually disappeared during the following 15–20 min. None of us had experienced such an attack before. Of course, we wanted to follow it up. However, shortly after, my colleague moved to Chicago, and I got a busy chair in Copenhagen. In July 1984, however, Vanderhaeghen and Crawley organized an international conference on “Neuronal Cholecystokinin” in Brussels. The last session of the conference was entitled “Clinical significance of neuronal cholecystokinin”. The chairman asked in the general discussion whether anyone in the audience beyond the session-speakers had observations of clinical interest. I therefore described the experienced panic attacks provoked by CCK-4. […] Since then, the volume of clinical and experimental publications about CCK-4 and panic disorder has grown overwhelmingly, as also reflected in later reviews.

(Sources - 1, 2, 3, 4)

Order: Amphipoda

Common Name: no common name for the whole order, other than “amphipods”, though freshwater species are often called “freshwater shrimp”, “scuds”, or “sideswimmers”

Suborders*: 6 - Amphilochidea (89 families), Colomastigidea (2 families), Hyperiidea (35 families), Hyperiopsidea (3 families), Pseudingolfiellidea (1 family), and Senticaudata (109 families)

*(I am not listing families as, as you can see above, it would take up too much space)

Anatomy: no carapace; one pair of sessile (stalk-less) compound eyes; two pairs of antennae; gills on the coxae (base of the leg); generally laterally compressed body divided into 13 segments; head is fused to the thorax; gnathopods (uniquely modified feeding legs)

Diet: mostly detritivores or scavengers; some are grazers of algae, omnivores, or predators of small insects and other crustaceans

Habitat: found in almost all aquatic environments, from fresh water to water with twice the salinity of sea water, from the tideline to the deepest known point of the ocean; some species of the family Talitridae are terrestrial

Evolved in: Lower Carboniferous

Propaganda under the cut:

image source

Okay but what about the person who brought this injured dragonfly to a wildlife rehabber

here is some complete garbage as an example. because these "photos" are not completely made up by AI, people into spiders know the species and will recognize their features without looking closely, getting tricked in the process. if you know spider anatomy and look closely though, both of those look like utter abominations. the original photos these two were based on are here and here, by the way

for what it's worth i don't know if the person or people behind the blog made the AI images themselves, but content scraping is like a game of telephone. photos get re-re-re-reposted by stupid ass pages on instagram called "nature.incredible.of.wonder" and the original source erodes away

CONE SNAIL has:

Leetle eyes

Long sniffer

Toingue

CONCHS are mostly vegetarian and their only defense is to look you in the eye and make you feel bad for them

Here's a video of a conch snail in action:

Leeches, on the other hand, carry their young on their underside. Let's remain safely attached to mama

Here we counterface all the arguments made in recent papers from the very well-funded and promoted groups militantly opposed to AVT. One of these papers offers the advice “Don’t try to prove an idea is right. Instead, try to falsify it”. Fully cognizant of Popper’s “Reason and Refutation”, this has long been our own mantra, though notably unshared across the community. As an example of good faith, Branscomb and colleagues wrote, “arguably the key virtue of the alkaline hydrothermal vent (AHV) model as a scientific hypothesis regarding the initial steps in the emergence of life is its essentially unique vulnerability to disproof. It places all of its chips on the claim that certain naturally arising, but experimentally reproducible, geochemical circumstances do produce castles of mineral ‘cells’ in which three key, undeniably life-like chemical disequilibria are ‘abiotically’ generated and maintained. If it proves not to be possible to experimentally substantiate these conjectures, then we may expect interest in the theory to wane.” Furthermore, falsifiable predictions of AVT were listed in Russell that would, if demonstrated, “reveal embarrassing missing links, or even leave the AVT as just one more casualty of the general theory of natural rejection.” We look forward to similar commitment and clarity from the wet-dry polymerizing pond people. However, we do admit to being impressed over the one prediction made by this group—viz., Dimitar Sassalov’s promise that Harvard University “will soon have the equivalent of a living thing in the lab at the chemical level”. We will be particularly interested to hear what bearing such an artifact might have on the putative ‘first universal ancestor’, its evolving progeny and the geochemical/geophysical disequilibria responsible for its emergence?

Firstly, let me say there’s nothing wrong with keeping jumping spiders as pets. I have one myself. She’s a captive bred regal jumping spider. She’s currently a bit over two years old. I’ve had other jumping spiders as well, but they passed of old age and in one instance, a failed molt, which is fairly common.

Before and after getting pet jumpers, I joined some jumper groups, read a lot of care guides, and watched a slew of videos about keeping them.

It became obvious pretty quickly that apparently due to their cute fuzzy appearance, large round eyes, and intelligent behavior, people (owners, admirers, and popular content creators) assign human and mammal emotions and behaviors to them, often to their detriment.

I personally believe bugs are complex creatures that can be intelligent and have emotions, but that those emotions and behaviors are NOT analogous to human or mammal behavior and ignoring their natural needs and behaviors means you’re likely not providing proper care for them.

This is mainly about handling. Bugs don’t want to be handled. They get nothing positive out of it emotionally. They don’t want to be pet or cuddle with you. They don’t want to hang out with you. You’re a big scary predator, and it likely wants to get away from you. Forcing handling can stress, injure, or kill them. That’s why I tagged the post (linked above) “your spider is not a cat.” It doesn’t seek affection from you.

I can’t tell you how many posts or videos I saw where people were super upset because they let their jumper out of its enclosure to handle it and it either escaped and got lost or they somehow crushed it and killed or injured it badly. I’ve also seen people chasing their jumper around its enclosure trying to grab it or get it to jump onto their hand when it’s clearly just trying to hide.

As an example, a very common thing I’ve seen in videos about jumpers is people saying when they lift their front legs at you and jump or climb onto you/your hands it’s because they “want uppies” and want to be pet and be close to you. This is a wild misreading of behavior. Sometimes raising the front legs is a defensive display, trying to make itself look larger to scare away a threat. Other times, they’re waving their legs around to sense and feel their environment, or preparing to jump onto something. They are arboreal, and their natural behavior is to find a high vantage point, so climbing onto the big thing (you) nearby is normal. It’s not because it seeks your affection.

Certainly if you DO handle them frequently they can get used to it, and it becomes less stressful for them. But in my opinion the dangers outweigh any positives, and I don’t handle mine. These are wild animals that have not been domesticated, even when captive bred. If you want to give them enrichment, and you should, offer them prey to chase or interesting things to explore in a larger enclosure. For those that do still handle them, I’d encourage you to watch their behavior closely and read the spidery cues they’re giving you rather than assuming they’re feeling what a cute little mammal might be feeling in the same scenario.