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One of nature's curiosities
essem
Explorer
Can anyone please identify this?
Its mouth is not where it seems to be, and appears to need to tilt
its head back to feed, looking a little like Ridley Scott's Alien.
Does that mean it's looking backward as it does so?
Its mouth parts look a little like a crab's mandibles.
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Comments
Er, the images register but don't seem to appear, can anyone
please lend s hand?
Looks a bit like a praying mantis ... but not exactly.
Try googling longheaded grass hopper. Pulls up
Yup @Richdawson I reckon you got it, there...
Did you actually see one of these? Looks like a bug from Mars.
I watched a Nature Programme yesterday evening about several scientists, one naturalist/explorer and one nature Photographer all going on an expedition to new Guinea ('Lost Land of the Volcanoes' BBC 2) and in the first programme alone, they reckon they identified at least 60 new species of insects, 20 of birds 5 of mammals and 19 reptiles. And the deforestation and logging is gradually encroaching onto this territory.... The team are accumulating as much vital information as possible, in order to lobby the Government there, to either halt or drastically reduce the progress of the devastation...
Some of the creatures they found defy imagination.
Now I know where all these TV & movie space aliens really come from. Their original models are right here....
Grasshopper it is..
Actually, one of the most curious things in nature is a creature know as Homo Sapien. The strangest creature on this planet, I think.
Peace to all
It belongs to Orthoptera which has around 27,000 species worldwide, and come in all shapes and sizes...
Basic entomology can be interesting and fun
but finding out how insects live is not for everyone
Some people have a phobia about things that creep and crawl
but if they took time out to study them, they'd have no fear at all!
I love insects
Thank you very much @Richdawson for the ID, I clicked on the grey
tags a while ago and the intended pix turned up in another window.
And yes @silver I found it on the verandah of an eatery looking
quite still so I took a few pix on my phablet before it could take off,
then brought it home in a paper bag by which time one leg had
fallen off quite cleanly.
The attached pix were taken with a rather better digicam with a
macro feature that lets me go up close and personal, then resized
for nb.
But the close-up of the mouth is a 100% crop from the original
10MP file.
Thank you all for your inputs and yes @Lionduck, Homo sapiens
are not any less strange. :-)
“We must not allow the clock and the calendar to blind us to the fact
that each moment of life is a miracle and mystery.”
― H.G. Wells
One more stab at image attachment via another browser.
Which works perfectly now, 'ray.
Those other pix show the critter's antennae pointing forward, as I imagine
they would, while the one I found had them folded back, which suggest
that they weren't in 'hunt' mode.
I wonder how they extend, and if the little white dot in front of the brown
bulge could be an eye.
Is there an entomologist on board?
I would suggest that's its eye...
Edit: But on second thoughts and closer examination, I can't tell where its eyes are, or what that little white lump is.... curious....
The transparent parts of eyes are not usually white... white is an all-purpose reflective colour, while eyes tend to need to absorb light in order to analyse its composition, hence they are usually black or at least dark, an absorptive colour.
So I would doubt the white bit is it's eye
@essem it's been a long time since I studied entomology ....Anyhow, insects have what's known as 'compound' eyes, (the pair of large bulges) and many also have three 'simple' eyes between the compound eyes ...
The function of the simple eyes are to detect light and dark ....
The compound eyes are multifaceted .....
Ah so @Shoshin now I get it.
Even as its head bends back to feed, it retains a wide range of view
behind and in front - with its keel-shaped tip - to keep a sharp
lookout for @federica. :-)
What a remarkable piece of adaptation and a work of beauty as well!