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Category Archives: Behavior
Why Do Butterflies Eat Dirt, Poop, and Dead Things?
Written by Nancy Miorelli Puddling The short of this answer is that butterflies have a behavior where they sit on river banks, dead stuff, or poop and lap up the salts and minerals. It’s a behavior that can be seen in … Continue reading
Posted in Behavior, Ecology
Tagged Butterfly, Lepidoptera, mud-puddling, puddling, tongue
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What proportion of insects dying in captivity is considered ‘normal’?
Written by Joe Ballenger Your Name: Caryl Your Bug Question: I raise early season monarchs inside in New Zealand.(I bring the chrysalides inside because of our poor spring weather with heavy rains and gales). Yesterday 12 eclosed but 3 fell … Continue reading
Posted in Behavior, Insect Rearing
Tagged Beneficial Insects, Butterflies and Moths, Butterfly, Physiology
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Why do social insects die facefirst in the nest?
Written by Joe Ballenger First and foremost, I’m really glad we got this question: From: Katharine I’ve been keeping an eye on a wasp nest in my grandmother’s yard for a while. Since we just had a cold snap, I … Continue reading
Why don’t spiders have wings?
Your Name: Anarely Your Bug Question: Hello, I was wondering, why are the exact reasons that spiders don’t have wings? Is it possible for them to evolve and get them or what is stopping this from happening? I’m sure the … Continue reading
The mystery of the old stable: Why are there flies all over the place?
Written by Joe Ballenger Flies can be tricky to talk about. There are well over 100,000 described species, and it’s likely that there’s at least one million which haven’t been described yet. Most are small enough to not be noticed, … Continue reading
Why are woolly apple aphids flying around everywhere?
Although we don’t think of ourselves as an insect ID blog, some of these requests give us some great opportunities to talk about stuff that’s happening seasonally. Fall is an important time for bugs, because they’re finishing up their lifecycles … Continue reading
Why are cicadas showing up dead on my porch?
We get a lot of letters in our inbox, and some of my favorite inquiries are ID requests where someone also notices something interesting going on. Here’s an example of one such question: Your Name: Becky Boots Your Bug Question: … Continue reading
Mosquitoes love cheese! Here’s why.
This week’s post is not a direct user submission, but it’s a picture that’s so neat that I wanted to highlight it with it’s own blog post. The picture is pretty self-explanatory. It’s a picture of a mosquito attempting to … Continue reading
Posted in Behavior, Ecology
Tagged Biochemistry, Cheese, Food, Microbiology, Parasites, Symbiotes
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I saw some roaches dancing. What are they doing?
Awhile back, we received an astute question from Tabitha who found some cockroaches acting really weird. Your Name: Tabitha Your message: Hey there! I work in an office by a beautiful flowing creek. Every time it rains, brown roaches come … Continue reading
Posted in Behavior, Chemistry, Pest Management, Physiology
Tagged Biochemistry, Cockroach, Physiology
2 Comments
Why is this chrysalis always dripping?
Post written by Joe Ballenger This post is going to be odd, because I’m going to start with a confession: This question initially stumped me, and it actually took me a couple weeks to fully figure out what was going … Continue reading
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