If You Ever Need A Reference For Alien Eggs, Just Accidentally Freeze Hardboiled Eggs 😆

[Image ID: two close-up photos of short green lawn grass. The photos appear to be taken in the evening right before sunset, where the shadows are really stark and the tips of the grass is lit up a brilliant bright green by the sunlight. /End ID]

got high and thought the grass looked so beautiful i couldn't believe it and proceeded to take some really mid grass pics

Moth Of The Day #123

Blair's Mocha

Cyclophora puppillaria

From the geomtridae family. They have a wingspan of 28-36 mm. They tend to inhabit open and coastal habitats, but are also occasionally seen in woodland. They can be found in Europe and North Africa to the Caucasus area.

Rainbow Scarab (Phanaeus vindex), male, family Scarabaeidae, Pennsylvania, USA

a species of "true dung beetle".

photograph by Michael Reed

Moth Of The Day #107

Chinese Character

Cilix glaucata

From the drepanidae family. They have a wingspan of 18-26 mm. They tend to inhabit hedgerows, scrub and open woodland as well as gardens. They can be found in Europe, Asia Minor and North Africa.

“I think a healer is someone who seeks to understand and not to judge and says, “there, there, I know how dark it all feels for you right now, but you are doing fine… you are doing great… you will be okay, eventually.””

— juansen dizon

I'd love to hear more about what makes the wings of the stylops so unique! Wings are always fascinating to me

Almost all insects with wings normally have four of them, except that in beetles, the front wings became the shields we call Elytra:

And in the true flies (diptera), the HIND wings became little vibrating knobs we call halteres, which are organic gyroscopes for collecting information about air pressure, direction and elevation, easiest to see on larger flies like this crane fly:

So, the male Strepsiptera is actually the only insect other than flies to have evolved halteres, but the Strepsiptera's halteres are evolved from the FRONT wings:

Their hind wings are odd enough too; simple "fans" unlike the intricately veined wings of other insects, but still not as unusual as forewing halteres. It's thought to be convergent evolution, and that they may have once been elytra like the beetles have. A connection to beetles is also suggested by the fact that a few beetle groups have larvae very similar to those of the strepsipterans, which look like this:

Lovably nasty larvae! They jump, and they're all spiny, and they actually use an acid secretion to melt their way into their first host.

There's one other insect group that incidentally evolved elytra shields, earwigs!

But earwigs can't be ancestral to either beetles or strepsiptera, because earwigs don't go through a larval stage, which the big evolutionary divide for insects; all the insects with larvae are thought to have just one common ancestor, splitting off from the other insects fairly early.

[Image IDs: all images are close-ups of pill millipedes, which are small arthropods (bugs) with a similar appearance to roly polies. They are pill-shaped and segmented with shiny scale-like plating that goes to the ground and covers up all their lil legs.

ID1: a rusty red pill millipede with a black head and mottled black spots on its segments. It’s segments are edged with a pale, slightly translucent yellowish color. It’s photographed from the side. It’s standing on light grayish tree bark.

ID2: another photo of the same or a similar millipede. This one is photographed from a higher angle, making it easier to see black backwards-pointing triangles running down its back. In this image it’s standing on bark covered in moss.

ID3: another photo of the same or a similar millipede on a similar background. This one is photographed from directly above.

ID4: another photo of the same or a similar millipede on a similar background. This one is on its back and half-curled up so its head is right-side up. Its belly and legs are a tan-ish; and its little legs stick up like it’s reaching out.

ID5: two of the red/black millipedes completely curled up on their sides, completely hiding their heads and legs in their plates. These ones are sitting on grey granite. One is slightly smaller than the other.

ID6: a similar millipede to the others, but this one is a much darker maroon red and less shiny. This one has a bright copper stripe behind its head. It’s on leaf litter.

ID7: another darker millipede on leaf litter and coniferous twigs (fir, I think). This one is curled up, but is upright like a wheel.

ID8: a collection of four millipedes on rough grey bark. There is one to the left, two in a vertical row to the right, and one in the center. All of them are curled up except for the center one. The one on the left is orange with black mottled spots and black diamonds running down the center of its back. The one in the center is an ochre color with darker orange edges on the bottom of its segments. It is sparsely mottled with black, with a black head. Behind its head is a yellow stripe, then a black stripe, then no more stripes. It has tall backwards-facing triangles along its back that get smaller and smaller until they disappear, after which there is one big black triangle at the end of the millipede’s body. The top right millipede is a blue-green-grey, similar to the color of lichen. Its segments are edged with thick orange-grey, and it has connected black diamonds running down its back. The bottom millipede is mostly covered in black spots, with orange stripes peeking through at the edge of its segments. There are black diamonds running down its back, which are separated from most of the other mottling by grey.

ID9: a photo of a pill millipede from above and a bit further away than the others. The millipede in this one is almost entirely black, with a bit of gold peeking through. This one is on a pale-skinned person’s hand, and is just a bit shorter than the width of their fingers.

/End IDs]

Pill millipede (not an isopod/roly poly), Glomeris klugii, Glomeridae

Found in Europe and northern Africa

Photos 1-4 by ingridaltmann, 5 by vytautas_tamutis, 6-7 by amujcinovic, 8 by phtevendrews, and 9 (for scale) by bianca_t

Image ID: a photograph of a path through a foggy forest. All of the trees are covered in moss and the only places there isn’t greenery is the trail and the sky. The underbrush seems to consist of grass and other leafy plants, but it’s hard to tell. The trees have these beautiful, winding branches that cover up the top half of the photo. It’s very shaded and slightly blue-hued in the foreground, but further down the trail it’s yellow-hued, indicating the sun is shining through the fog there. /End ID

All rights reserved  by Michael Carl

Outfits - Carmela Soprano in Season 1 of The Sopranos 

an appreciation post for pigeons, please? <3

Let me give some of my fav (and underappreciated) pigeons!

Philippine Green Pigeon (Treron axillaris), family Columbidae, order Columbiformes, Zambales, Philippines

photograph by Gid Ferrer

Ashy Wood Pigeon (Columba pulchricollis), family Columbidae, order Columbiformes, Nepal

photograph by Rita Rossi

Pheasant Pigeon (Otidiphaps nobilis), family Columbidae, order Columbiformes, found in New Guinea and nearby islands

photograph by Jindřich Pavelka (500px)

Scaled Pigeon (Patagioenas speciosa), family Columbidae, order Columbiformes, Costa Rica

photograph by Memix Photography

Cinnamon-headed Green Pigeon (Treron fulvicollis), male, family Columbidae, order Columbiformes, Singapore

photograph by Hong Yijun