Arthropoda - Tumblr Posts

Yes yes! yes yes and this wasn’t even only specific to fearing bugs but to how often people outright hate these groups. In my area people say that just hate beetles (except maybe ladybugs) because if you ask them to picture of beetle, they are going to picture of one of the extremely invasive species that was introduced here, like Japanese flower beetles, that swarm down and eat up their gardens every summer. Or they only see ground and dung beetles and now they assume all beetles are gross and nasty.

So many people think yellow jackets and red paper wasps are basically all there is out there because those beautiful, vibrant parasitoids stay out of their way. They say “bees are cool but screw wasps they are just assholes” because they are so ignorant about the entire group of scoliids that are fuzzy and pretty and love peacefully feeding from flowers, or about the collection of hyper specialized predators that eat their most feared pests, it’s so unfair. I want to BONK somebody with a newspaper roll every time they tell me they killed a cicada hawk because they thought it was a damn murder hornet.

Wasps, yes, wasps, can look like THIS

I tell people I want Madagascar hissing roaches as pets and they look at me like I just told them that collecting rare diseases and drinking sewage is a fun hobby. EVEN of the small number of problematic roach species, most of humanity’s beef is literally just with Blattella germanica, the German roach- That one is just particularly great at surviving in an urban, indoor environment and made themselves invasive well outside of their native range- But ffs there are so many roaches that are literally just on par with isopods in how chill and not an issue they are. My theoretical pets couldn’t even become invasive or an infestation of any sort if escaped. You would not believe the difference in reaction when I just make up a fake bug name like “exotic forest sweeper” or “greater woodbug” for some of the common species I would love to breed and just avoid the R word while describing them.

Animal and yes, specifically bug lovers, please, PLEASE stop trying to be that person who says “but just not this kind”. Please don’t stop being curious and don’t basket together entire categories of organism based on a species or two that’s either just misunderstood in the first place, or it was literally a non-native problem introduced by humans. If I say I don’t like centipedes as much because they just personally creep me out I’m being proud and honest about an arbitrary bias. I’m not trying to frame them as less intrinsically valuable or interesting because they can bite people or they get into houses or because the giant desert one is large and can cause you horrific pain if provoked. In fact, they deserve every bit of contrarian apologia and defense that spiders have finally been getting. True beetles, Coleoptera? The most diverse order of any taxonomical group of living things in existence, with over 450,000 different species across the planet! More of y’all who tell everyone you are weird and you love nature would get so much out of committing to it. Seriously, more people broadly need to find a wild jumping spider and dare to get a little out of their comfort zones for just once and learn that we don’t have to be panicky primates hiding in caves from venomous cobras and tropical arachnids anymore. Nature deserves respect but it’s generally not constantly out to get the average western suburbanite, as much as most people pretend it is.

I have a collection of pinned wasps I’ve been working on for about two summers now, including 4 yellow jacket queens and a few paper species. You know how many times I’ve been stung catching them? Donut. Zero. No protective gear either, just me and a cheap net out on the trail. It’s been an absolutely eye opening project that has erased so much of my growing-up phobia of them. I’ve stood in the middle of several cicada killers zipping around me and approached their burrows to find out how little harm they mean to anyone. I’ve caught and released mud daubers and eusocial workers alike to find out how much their infamous aggression was over exaggerated.

Like, for real, even all that buzzes and is not a bee or butterfly can still be beautiful, excite the mind’s wonder, and belong in this world. 

Fun fact. The overwhelming majority of wasp species, of which there are freaking dozens of thousands, are solitary parasitoids that are non-aggressive to humans. You just don’t like yellow jackets/paper wasps.

The majority of cockroach species serve a massively good ecological niche and do not transmit diseases or invade homes.

Etc...

It's commission time (:

A woolly bear caterpillar for @antichrist-vevo, and a rubber ducky isopod for @hot0sauce (:

Reference, Reference