Insects and other Creepy Crawlies

[Flutterby]

Great pics ExFmem...do you know what it is?

[ExFmem]

Flutterby,
I believe it's an Oriental Bee Hawk, one of the Hawk Moths. ( Sphingidae) They're crepuscular (fly at sunrise & sunset), so just look around flowers early morn and late afternoon. And they're FAST!

[Flutterby]

[Sprocky]

Trying my luck with insects, but not easy when you don't have the right equipment.

Water Skimmers feeding off a dead Cricket.

[Flutterby]

Still a good pic! The water looks toxic! -O

[ExFmem]

After a very rainy summer here, I found these ants that had formed a bridge over the water in order to transport their eggs to higher, drier land. How they communicate and coordinate all this is amazing to me, and they were really fascinating to watch.





Although these aren't African ants (they're fire ants originally from South America and now invasive in the USA), African Driver Ants can also form bridges using their bodies as architectural structures.

[BluTuna]

Is the bridge floating in the water? Do the ants underneath drown?

Amazing behaviour and great pictures!

[ExFmem]

Yes, BluTuna, they are floating on water in the pics, and no, they do not drown. There is quite a bit of info./research done on this, as it offers engineers a model for building better bridges, rafts, etc.

"The ants’ sheer resiliency and buoyancy is also remarkable. When the researchers tried to push the floating rafts below the water’s surface, they found they could resist a significant amount of force and float back up. This is enabled, in part, by the ants’ exoskeletons, which are naturally hydrophobic (i.e. they chemically repel water). When many ants clump together to form a structure, water doesn’t penetrate into the gaps between then, so when they’re forced underwater, the air that remains in these cavities helps them float."

Here are a few links for more info.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notro ... Ar4GyhyFSU

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-n ... uHLzexc.99


http://www.businessinsider.com/fire-ant ... ies-2014-1

http://www.simonsfoundation.org/quanta/ ... n-of-ants/

[Mel]

Learned something new today! Thanks, ExFmem. Those ants really are intelligent critters that display a fascinating behaviour.

[Flutterby]

Amazing!