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Let's see your dung beetles, African insects and arachnids...


Game Warden

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Okay everyone: Macro lenses at the ready...

To get the ball rolling... here's a little guy I spied on a public road in the Limpopo a few years back.

sanvisit11.jpg

I hope s/he made it to wherever they were going!

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That's one great big ball of dung!!

 

Don't know whether I can bring anything to the dung party I'm afraid.

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Nothing like this topic to get me posting again -- have missed the fun on ST for too long!

 

Ndutu post-6190-1297548593_thumb.jpg

 

Karatu post-6190-1297548632_thumb.jpg

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Salty Dog, you have marked your return well!! :D

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Nice spider, I have many phobias but fortunately spiders aren't amongst them. Given we live with so many here in Australia, just as well. ;)

 

I am, however, extremely phobic about snakes. Even the word makes me feel ill. But I have handled live snakes of the non venomous variety and they have a cool, silky feel which is rather nice and the pythons in particular have gorgeous faces. And of course (not to bang on about it) I did take those remarkable, CLOSE UP photos of the 3m spitting cobra at Lewa with my 24mm lens. :D:lol: (Believe that if you will)

 

So maybe the time has come for the "show us your snake" thread. I know Dik dik will have some, being a snake man.

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I'm glad a "Show Us Your Snake" thread was not necessary. That would definitely have been a case of "if you dare"! :P

 

Of course I am actually here to post a so-so picture of a dung beetle, not to engage in schoolboy humour at Twaffle's expense (a possibly dangerous pastime, although not as dangerous as photographing spitting snakes with a 24mm lens).

 

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Edited by pault
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  • 2 weeks later...

Sometimes I don't see these reposts, comes of checking on the iphone one minute and the computer the next. Like the bad humour and the dung beetles. ;)

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  • 2 months later...

This one is on the ball

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Is the left one green with envy about the other guy's great pile???

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Flattened Giant Dung Beetle

Pachylomerus femuralis

 

We all know some people are "full of it." As a matter of fact, our planet is also full of it but, as usual, evolution has come up with a plan. That's why we have lots and lots of dung beetles—little dung beetles for the small cases and large dung beetles for the very large cases. It comes as no surprise that the largest dung beetle deals with the largest loads.

 

Pachylomerus femuralis, is about as long as its scientific name, more than 5 cm, and specializes in the removal of elephant dung. During the rainy season, when elephants largely live on enormous quantities of fresh grass, dozens of these beetles can be seen churning up a single juicy mount, rolling off chunks the size of large golf balls, and dropping them "hole-in-one" into nearby holes, dug by their mates. Although you'll see them mostly walking head down, pushing the dung ball with their hind legs, they can actually fly. Like all beetles, the forewings have been modified into hard shields, called elytra. These shields offer good protection for the body and the membranous hind wings, a useful development, as we shall see.

 

A dung beetle ready for take off is a sight to behold and must have inspired the George Lucases of this world. In sequence, the beetle raises itself up on its segmented legs, hinges the hard elytra upwards, spreads out the wings horizontally and then…George Lucas had to start looking elsewhere for inspiration, because after all this the dung beetle takes off without any apparent sense of direction, balance or navigation and usually, with a loud thwack, flies into the first solid object it reaches, crashes to the ground—half the time landing on its back and spending the next half hour trying to turn itself back on to its feet. Not quite the way to win Star Wars. If dung beetles could talk, they probably would say "oops!" a lot.

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Game Warden

DO you think those smaller guys suffer from an inferiority complex? ;)

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  • 3 months later...

Preying Mantis. Found this guy crawling on my shirt while I was sitting in the safari vehicle.

 

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Jumping Spider. He jumped on our guide while he was driving. Luckily he didn't swerve off the road from the distraction AND it was about time for a sundowner. That gave me plenty of time to switch over to the macro lens and try to photograph it.

 

gallery_6752_472_48416.jpg

 

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Cracking detail: thumbs up for macro photography!

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  • 1 year later...

It's about time we had some new Macro shots for this topic. AB, where's your spider ID pics?

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  • 3 months later...

Here is a parasitic Spider wasp or Turantula Hawk. It stings a spider to paralyze it and then lays its eggs inside the spider. Once the egg(s) hatch the larvae feed on the live spider.

The second photo is an African Burrowing Scorpion. This is what the honey badger is so eagerly digging up in the Kalahari. Our guide and a bushman dug it up on a bushman walk at Kalahari Plains camp.


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Edited by umiami05
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here are some more cool african insects. If you take the time, there are so many cool things to see there!

 

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armchair bushman

I will post eventually.

do I really need to be the douchebag nerd who points out the issue with the title of this thread? "Lets see your dung beetles, arachnids, and other African insects" infers that arachnids are a type of African insect. A simple rearrangement of the wording would clear up this problem Mr. GW (whose English is usually very good, by the way).

How about, "Let's see your Dung Beetles, other African insects, and Arachnids"?

 

Taxonomy Nazis are annoying. :angry:

English language Nazis are annoying. :angry:

Someone who's a Taxonomy AND English language Nazi really just should be shot. Does anyone have a gun? :( Please forgive me.

:D:P

Edited by armchair bushman
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Not at all, editing now.

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armchair bushman

;)

A slight improvement would be to add the word "other" before "insects" so as not to separate Dung Beetles from Class Insecta altogether. but now I'm being nit-picky.

Edited by armchair bushman
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We are going to have fun trying to identify all of these :)

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