Day 48 Of Posting Cute Creatures We Found On Our Field Trip:

Day 48 of posting cute creatures we found on our field trip:

Today’s creature is so rare and understudied that it doesn’t even have a Wikipedia article:

Meet Dinarica pouzolzii the rarest terrestrial snail in Europe. It’s native only to western Balkans and only in regions where soil is very rich in calcium. It likes to hang out near caves. And that’s all we know about it.

But we found this one a friend!

And the second we put them on the ground…

They began kissing!

This is how snails start their mating ritual. We accidentally found snailmates (snail soulmates) of the rarest snail species in the region. Imagine the joy!

This is adorable

Strange Bedfellows: these unprecedented photos show a leafcutter bee sharing its nest with a wolfspider

I stumbled across these photos while I was looking up information on leafcutter bees, and I just thought that this was too cool not to share. Captured by an amateur photographer named Laurence Sanders, the photos were taken in Queensland, Australia several years ago, and they quickly garnered the attention of both entomologists and arachnologists.

The leafcutter bee (Megachile macularis) can be seen fetching freshly-cut leaves, which she uses to line the inner walls of her nest. The wolfspider moves aside as the bee approaches, allowing her to enter the nest, and then she simply watches as the leaf is positioned along the inner wall.

Once the leaf is in position, they seem to inspect the nest together, sitting side-by-side in the entryway; the bee eventually flies off again to gather more leaves, while the wolfspider climbs back into the burrow.

The leafcutter bee seems completely at ease in the presence of the wolfspider, which is normally a voracious predator, and the wolfspider is equally unfazed by the fact that it shares its burrow with an enormous bee.

The photographer encountered this bizarre scene by accident, and he then captured a series of images over the course of about 2 days (these are just a few of the photos that were taken). During that 2-day period, the bee was seen entering the nest with pieces of foliage dozens of times, gradually constructing the walls and brood chambers of its nest, and the spider was clearly occupying the same burrow, but they did not exhibit any signs of aggression toward one another.

The photos have been examined by various entomologists and arachnologists, and those experts seem ubiquitously surprised by the behavior that the images depict. The curator of entomology at Victoria Museum, Dr. Ken Walker, noted that this may be the very first time that this behavior has ever been documented, while Dr. Robert Raven, an arachnid expert at the Queensland Museum, described it as a "bizarre" situation.

This arrangement is completely unheard of, and the images are a fascinating sight to behold.

Sources & More Info:

Brisbane Times: The Odd Couple: keen eye spies bee and spider bedfellows in 'world-first'

iNaturalist: Megachile macularis

Day 51 of posting cute creatures we found on our field trip:

Viviparous lizard (Zootoca vivipara) is the smallest European lizard. This is an adult female, they don’t get bigger than this. These lizards prefer to live in cold climate and on high mountains. They can be found in Scandinavia and Northern Europe, the Alps and all mountain ranges in Balkans. They adapted to cold climate and long winters by live bearing and being tiny.

This is the last creature we found! I hope you enjoyed this “series” and fun facts about all the animals we met.

You know that you made a good decision to break up with your boyfriend when after breakup he searches through your social media to see if I shit talked him. And then sends you messages to complain.

Red-headed Barbet (Eubucco bourcierii), male, doing an anger at you, family Capitonidae, order Piciformes, Ecuador

photograph by Amer Cavalcant

I decided to re-watch Steven Universe, because I live under the rock and I had no idea that there was a movie and Future spin-off.

I hated the show when it came out and I was an edgy 14 year old, but now? Holy shit I was so pleasantly surprized! It's so cute and positive, but can also get too real sometimes. I cried three times total and two were uncontrollable sobs. I find 90% of the characters hot. I might do some fanart. I'm so happy that I found this show and gave it a chance after all the negative criticisms I heard about it.

It really helped me in these trying post-break up times.