Last night I made a brief excursion to photograph some nocturnal animals and found a fair number of them on a short walk. I encountered several beetles, the large black one with the iridescence gave off a very strong minty, but musky smell when touched. There were also a couple species of moths, which hopefully I can identify later, a hemipteran and a wasp. The best insect was a mantis fly, which is a name given to many insects from a family related to lacewings that have front legs that resemble those of the praying mantis – which is a great example of convergent evolution, and looks cool.

The most interesting sighting was an anole in the process of eating a beetle. I was also struck by the shyness of geckos. For an animal that can speed across any surface with velcro toes, it seems like they should be less afraid of a passing photographer. They are, however, the only lizard that seems unafraid to sit on a wall where they are entirely uncamouflaged.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 3rd, 2010 at 6:19 pm and is filed under Explorations, Les Fruits sur la Terre. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.