Peanut Bug aka Peanut Lanternfly (Fulgora laternaria), family Fulgoridae, Guatemala
Photograph by Bernard DuPont

seen from United Kingdom
seen from Australia
seen from T1
seen from T1
seen from Malaysia

seen from United States
seen from South Korea
seen from China
seen from China
seen from United Kingdom

seen from T1

seen from Malaysia
seen from France

seen from China
seen from Türkiye

seen from T1
seen from Malaysia

seen from Malaysia
seen from United States
seen from Türkiye
Peanut Bug aka Peanut Lanternfly (Fulgora laternaria), family Fulgoridae, Guatemala
Photograph by Bernard DuPont

Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
Trick or treat? 🎃 If you want 🤗
Happy Halloween! I hope you like your peanut bug! They're also known as alligator bugs, and many other names!
(img src)
Fulgrazier are active at night and use their hollow foreheads to communicate; varying the size and intensity of the flames they emit to articulate different thoughts and feelings. Should they be disturbed they will immediately snuff out their lights, being quite shy and secretive, despite their flashy communication. Fulgoberon are secretive and solitary, not mingling much with even their own kind. Although quite small, they are formidable when crossed and in fits of rage may even burn down their forest homes completely. The flames they emit from their heads vary in size and shape, seemingly tailored to an individuals personal tastes. --Attack Info-- --Ability Info--
Royal Ontario Museum - Insect Exhibits 2
Good news, I managed to squeeze in one more insect visit to the Royal Ontario Museum before the end of the year! As such the living denizens of the natural history section will be showcased one more time before 2024 is upon us. Before that, I'd like to take a moment to share new pictures from the insect displays within the natural history section. Compared to the pictures from 2019, these are a quantum leap forward in terms of clarity and use of lighting. The Peanut Bug - Fulgora laternaria (Picture 1) has always been a favorite of mine, so I always take the opportunity to go and visit it and marvel at the ridiculousness of the size of that head protuberance. Though a bit oversized, such a head fixature has an important function: knocking it against a tree is its mating call. If the attention they draw is unwelcome, they can startle their voyeurs with the eyeball spots on its wings. These markings are more prominent in live specimens; this pinned specimen's colors have faded away over time. You can even compare the images from 2019 and you'll see a difference in color saturation. Otherwise, when this Hemipteran is at rest, it looks similar to a helmeted Cicada with more opaque wings. In terms of relations however, the Peanut Bug is more closely related to the Spotted Lanternfly of Asia, as they are both part of the family Fulgoridae.
I'm also particularly fond of the texture of the Shining Leaf Beetle's (Picture 3 - Chrysophora chrysochlora) ornate emerald shell, and the tropical colors of the Weevils on display. Especially the blue Eupholus specimens (Picture 9 - right side specimens). Finally, I also noticed a new section (to me) in the animal gallery featuring Butterflies of the tropics and I'm still amazed at how large they are. Many of these iridescent, vibrantly-colored specimens have wingspan sizes that can be as large as a hand! They are more appropriately known as Birdwing Butterflies and they are all giants compared to the Butterflies that grow in the temperate climate of Toronto! The specimens focused on here are the Green Goliath Birdwing (Ornithoptera goliath - Pictures 2, 5 and 6), the black-and-white female Priam's birdwing (Ornithoptera priamus - Picture 8), the male Palawan Birdwing (Trogonoptera trojana - Picture 10 top), Wallace's Golden Birdwing (Ornithoptera croesus - Picture 10 middle) and the female Paradise Birdwing (Ornithoptera paradisea - Picture 10 bottom), but there are many more in the background. To glimpse these in person is wonderful, but seeing them flying around in their tropical environments would be a magical experience!
Pictures were taken on December 19, 2023 with a Google Pixel 4. Please come and see the bugs if you can, both the living insect specimens and the many displays. You may go to this link and view a post from earlier: ROM - Insect Exhibits 1.
Since these insect collections belong to the ROM, I’ve marked them with the Mantis icon. As well, Happy first day of Winter (tomorrow)!
Discord Dooble - “Psychic Bug”

Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
Peanut-headed lanternfly, Fulgora laternaria, Fulgoridae
Native to tropical forests in Mexico, Central America and South America.
Photos by Bernard DuPont (1), Pavel Kirillov (2), Notafly (3), Matthieu Berroneau (4-6; posted with permission), julissa_vela (7), alan_rockefeller (8), and osoandino (9)
May I request your silliest bugs?
Have you seen this silly ass man???
Peanut Bug aka Peanut Lanternfly (Fulgora laternaria), family Fulgoridae, Ecuador
In Ecuador, where Paxon and I both worked and met each other, this insect is called Machaca. It is believed, or so people say, that if a man is bitten by one, he will die within 24 hours, if he does not have sex with a virgin. They are incapable of biting people… 😑
Photograph by Pavel Krillov
Peanut Bug aka Peanut Lanternfly (Fulgora laternaria), family Fulgoridae, Guatemala
Photograph by Bernard DuPont
Royal Ontario Museum - Insect Exhibits 1
Well this is certainly different and there are a lot more insects than usual! Must be a special occasion, and it absolutely is! I’m dedicating this post to Ally, one of my dearest friends and a major inspiration for this blog. We’ve known each other for around 7 years now, having met in U of T’s 3rd year Insect Biology course. We’ve been on many a bug hunt together (and hopefully more in the future)! She loves insects even more than I do, so much so that she continues to study entomology at the University of Guelph, alongside the role the many insects play in the environment! I’m so proud of her! Hop onto Google Scholar to discover her work on the insect world or check out her blog to see her insight: Ecology for Life (@Ecology_forlife). In honoring her today, today’s showcase will briefly cover the ROM’s amazing insect collections* and how museums are useful for insect research and inspiring interest. Thank you for everything, dearest Bug Princess! May fortune continue to smile upon you!
While it may not specialize in insects, the ROM boasts some amazing collections of insects. There are quite a few tropical and exotic species to see including such notable finds like the Atlas Moth (Attacus atlas), the Peanut-Head Lanternfly (Fulgora laternaria), the many shimmering, iridescent Butterflies including the Blue Morpho (Morpho spp.) and Green Birdwing (Ornithoptera priamus), giant Stick Insects, Cicadas, tropical Grasshoppers and many Beetles like the ornate and horned Scarabs, the giant Harlequin Beetles (Acrocinus longimanus) or even oddities like the Violin Beetle (Mormolyce phyllodes). While these are fantastical, there are also bug boxes that contain insect species that are more familiar to us, allowing patrons to compare the insects of our region with those on the other side of the world. They might even recognize a few from their neighborhood. That organized Butterfly box has certainly been a useful reference for the identification of a few species. Honestly, picture don’t do it justice; if you’re an insect enthusiast, see these collections in person and notice that there’s also 1 spider and 1 centipede mounted as well.
Alongside the showcase of modern day insects within the ecology and biodiversity sections of the ROM, they are showcased in one other area too. The fossil section of the ROM carries fossilized insects (or fossil preservations) both in stone and within resin (look for the those in the ancient mammal area). These fossils are placed alongside their modern counterparts to highlight the changes time has brought to the world of arthropods. It seems many of them have gotten a little bit smaller. While the morphology appears consistent, many small changes have taken place over the hundreds of millions of years insects have crawled and flown over the Earth. The age of the fossils can also help us better understand the evolutionary timeline of these little creatures. All this while behind the scenes there are dedicated personnel working hard to push science and our understanding of the natural world forward! And of course, if all this insight into the scope and grandeur of the insect world isn’t enough, there are live insects to observe and enjoy at the ROM too including a Honeybee nest, Darkling Beetles, Walking Sticks and Hissing Roaches. And this is just one museum; many other institutions bring their own amazing contributions to the collective knowledge of insects.
*Note: Since these insect collections belong to the ROM, I’ve marked them with the Mantis icon. The poster is mine though. When things are safe/back to normal, I’ll return to the ROM for a follow-up (and I did return with new insect showcases: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 |).
ROM Pictures were taken on April 15, 2019 with Samsung Galaxy S4 and the poster picture was taken November 24, 2021 with a Google Pixel 4. Click on this link to view ROM - Insect Exhibits 2.