Bug Enthusiast

This relatively rare dragonfly breeds in small forest streams and seepages in late spring and early summer. I only encountered them in early June, and by midsummer the muddy seep that they laid eggs in had completely dried up, entombing the larvae until the water flows again.

Members of the small family Cordulegastridae can take up to 5 years to develop in their nymph stage, and the short lived adults seem to specialize in preying on bees and wasps.

when laying eggs, the females can lay hundreds at a time, depositing them into the mud with a motion that my dragonfly book compares to a sewing machine:

Atlas Moth (Attacus atlas) ♂

i know it sounds weird but I once saw this

ALL BUGS:

Since when has an animal’s cuteness EVER been tied to its ability to injure people?? Surely people aren’t irrational enough to only admire those other animals because they’re typically farther away from them. That wouldn’t make a lick of sense.

Most of the world’s wasp species never (or can’t) sting humans anyway, but even those that do, the hornets and yellow jackets people are probably citing, only sting defensively, and only get aggressive specifically because large vertebrate beasts like us have loved to eat their protein-packed babies for millions of years. There are even parts of the world where people raise wasps in their own gardens specifically to harvest and eat the grubs, which are supposedly just delicious, the painfulness of a social wasp’s sting is our fault but it’s also our fault for a reason. Besides being that devoted to their young, social wasps are pretty intelligent, able to recognize each other’s faces and even learn to recognize and remember specific humans. You can “tame” a wild wasp queen over time, and the rest of her nest will get used to you along with her. They are not at all mindless pain machines. They are also more important to the ecosystem than bees are. Yes they absolutely do pollinate just as many flowers. Not quite as efficiently per flower, since wasps are less hairy than bees, but flowering plants could totally do without our European honeybees. They could NOT do without wasps, which not only pollinate but are the most important predators of almost all other insects, which actually keeps both those insects AND all plant life healthier. Biomes would completely implode without wasps.

While I love seeing people sympathize with insects, I’ve noticed an increasing trend in the insect groups of people who think killing their natural predators is a good thing to do. Come on! I don’t think these folks would advocate shooting a lion to protect a gazelle.