Cecropia Moth
Tag: insects
My dad told me a story recently about how he was in Boy Scouts or something and they went on a hike and were each given a rifle and one single bullet to practice shooting with (idk, it was the 70s or whatever). One of his friends, whom I’ll refer to as Steel Balls for reasons that will soon become clear, beckons my dad to a part of the woods and points to a giant hornets nest up in a tree. SB announces that he’s going to shoot it, waits for my dad to take cover (as one should in this situation), and fires off his only round into the nest. Sure enough, a swarm of pissed off hornets descend upon SB, who stands stoically and perfectly still at the base of the tree. Dad maintains that, despite their buzzing right around him, none of the hornets stung his friend, and they soon calmed down and returned to their newly renovated nest. SB turns back to face my dad and imparts this chunk of wisdom: “That’s the secret to dealing with hornets, Jim. They don’t know humans make rifle shots; they don’t know where the noise came from. You gotta stand still and don’t move, and they won’t chase you. If you run, they know you’re guilty.” Apparently dad was so awed he gave up his single bullet so SB could shoot the nest a second time, with the same results.
Long story short: hornets can sense guilt and there are people in the world who have tested this theory.
theres this guy on youtube who just gets stung by increasingly deadly/painful insects and the videos are like 5 minutes of him getting psyched up to sting himself and then 10 minutes of him lying on the ground shrieking in agony
His name is Coyote Petersen and he is like what if your nerdy cub scouts leader made a youtube channel where he does nothing but have himself get bitten by gators and stung by insects for views in the hopes it will make people like him.
I like him a lot.
This is the Ocelot Friend?!
Oh my god I love him. Ocelot Friend (Coyote Peterson) is the BEST
He once climbed a tree to get a coconut, reached for it, then joyfully shouted “I caught an iguana! I’m putting it in my pocket!”
He then DOES SO and finishes collecting coconuts. He named the iguana Wilson and, upon releasing him, did an EXCELLENT recreation of the “Wilson floats away” scene from Castaway.
He gets stung/bitten/injured intentionally to show what basic first aid can be done, and accidental injuries are also used as teachable moments. As far as the extremely painful stings went, he was challenged to get stung by a bullet ant but decided to work his way up the insect pain index scale first so he had some idea of how bad it was going to be. He also insisted on catching each insect first. For the tarantula hawk, he caught it but also fell into a cactus while doing so, and then used that as a teaching moment of what to do when you fall into a fucking cactus.
His camera guys are the best, too. They do much breaking of the fourth wall and make snarky comments periodically. They provide much first aid for some reason.
Coyote is basically what you get if Steve Irwin and a golden retriever had a baby.
Reblogging primarily because I’ll never meet a cooler concept than a guy named Ocelot Friend.
I was gonna kinkshame this dude and then you guys explained. But you know what I’m still gonna kinkshame
I came across this guy after falling down a YouTube spiral of Epic Fails, and YouTube apparently decided that I liked watching people hurt themselves. But I actually like him, he’s really enthusiastic and serious about education and stuff.
every autumn, tens of millions of monarch butterflies travel to their ancestral winter roosts in mexico’s mountain fir forests, coating the trunks of the trees in the orange of their wings, and causing the branches to droop under their collective weight.
surfing winds from southern canada and the northern united states, and taking directional cues from the sun and magnetic poles, they travel 4,500 kilometres over two months to reach their hibernation grounds – a feat that still remains a bit of a mystery, but which has been going on for millions of years.
interestingly, the autumn migration south is accomplished in one generation, which lives for about seven months, while the spring migration north is done over three generations, each living about six weeks.
last year’s migration, however, was the lowest on record, as excessive herbicide usage has reduced the supply of the milkweed plant which the monarch larvae rely on to feed, and which makes the monarch caterpillars toxic to predators. but the plant is now being destroyed from heavy use of roundup ready pesticides used in soy and corn crop production.
further complicating matters for the monarch is climate change, as drought along their migratory route has exacerbated milkweed decline, and colder spring temperatures has meant the temperature-sensitive cold-blooded butterflies are unable to begin their journey north.
and once they reach their hibernation sites in mexico, the butterflies, which rely on a thick forest canopy for protection from the cold and rain, encounter deteriorating forests from illegal logging.
experts, however, are hopeful that this year’s migration will double or triple, thanks in large part to the conservation efforts of the mexican government. nevertheless, this increase would still put monarch numbers at one tenth of their record high of one billion.
photos by (click pic) joel sartore, paul bettings, lincoln brower, thomas d mengelsen, and ingo arndt
Steel Phoenix Studios 