• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

Attn Bug_girl: A question about bugs!

Dragonrock

Militant Elvisian Tacoist
Dragonrock
Joined
May 17, 2002
Messages
10,289
Location
Emmonak, Alaska
I was wondering about the maturing of hive insects. Do they go through the stages from egg to adult as other insects do? And are these stages easily recognizable as seperate stages? For example: Do wasps, bees, or ants hatch from eggs then live for a time as non-ambulatory "caterpillars" then enter a pupal stage and emerge as adults?

Basically what I'm asking is how well defined are these stages? Do they hatch from the egg or does the egg remain around them eventually acting as the cocoon?

Thanks in advance!
 
poop. roger beat me to it!
short answer: yes.:D

depending what social organization their species has, they may or may not be off on their own feeding, or have sisters and brothers that feed and care for them.
it's a pretty big group, so some make cocoons, some don't.

i tried to find a citation for my fun bee factoid: some bee species have a penis that snaps off after mating to form a plug in the female. Instead i got---uh, alarming and graphic---hits on google that had nothing to do with bees.

i also think that the advice i read there for "personal enlargement" using bee stings is a bad idea.
and that's my professional opinion :)
 
bug_girl,

I find bugs very icky. I have a bit of bugophobia. I used to live in Florida, land of cockaroaches the size of your hand... once a cockaroach jumped off the wall and landed on my hand, I promptly freaked out (the phrase "freaked out" is really quite a euphemism of the scene I caused).

I dont really have a question... but ummm... oh! Why are insects so icky?

(And yes, I'm deliberately spelling it "cockaroach").
 
i wish i knew the answer to that. i really hated the big roaches too, and only a sort of "shock treatment" got me over it. (i still don't like them, though.)

i think the best thing is to focus on the "nice" insects. butterflies and things that aren't as creepy. then when you are comfortable with that, move on to a more challenging bug. Bumble bees are wonderful--i can watch them forage for hours, and they aren't agressive at all. i can't say that i like _all_ bugs, but most i'm pretty comfortable handling.

Most people seem to learn the phobia either from their parents or from a bad personal experience.

(The shock treatment: i had to TA an entomology course, and had to go fetch ten large female roaches out of the colony. you can only tell if you have a male or a female by a close look at their butt. the colony was at the bottom of a 20 gallon trash can, so i had to reach in, all the way down to the bottom, grab one,.....you get the idea. of course as soon as i reached in they all went bezerk, jumping, flying......that was the day i became a true entomologist. :)

right about now at least 2 skeptics are doing a little creepy shudder in front of their computers....)
 
Yahweh said:
bug_girl,

I find bugs very icky. I have a bit of bugophobia. I used to live in Florida, land of cockaroaches the size of your hand... once a cockaroach jumped off the wall and l
Click to expand...
A true Floridian never admits to the presence of cockroaches..

"Why, we don't have cockroaches here! You must have seen a... palmetto bug !"
:D
 
bug_girl said:

(right about now at least 2 skeptics are doing a little creepy shudder in front of their computers....)
Click to expand...
And at least one is laughing his whatever-the-bug-equivalent-of-an-@$$-is off.
 
Hmm... A good thread for some entomological questions.

I sometimes see some small dark brown teardrop-shaped insects. They appear to be wingless, and there is a smaller darker teardrop-shaped marking on their back. Are these the larvae of cockroaches?
 
Yahweh said:
bug_girl,

I dont really have a question... but ummm... oh! Why are insects so icky?
Click to expand...

I read a section of a book once (section of a book...it's always just a section...I must have a short attention span) that discussed why people in our society think bugs are icky. Most Americans would never consider eating insects, although for people in many other cultures they are a tasty and nutritious treat. Some of them, anyway.

This author, whose name and book I can't remember at all, suggested that the bugs-are-yucky attitude has its roots in the way we developed agricuture and food preservation techniques. After we developed ways to grow and store large quantities of food, the presence of insects became more of a threat. When you found bugs in your food, they were a contaminant. They meant the food was spoiled, or they were eating your hard-earned grain stores. This grew into a sense of revulsion, a desire to avoid them, and a need to keep them out of the house/hut/hovel/cave/whatever.

That being said, I find the fact that roaches are shiny, move like the wind, and will run across my hand while I'm in bed at night, to be reason enough to detest them.
 
Yahweh said:
bug_girl,

I find bugs very icky. I have a bit of bugophobia. I used to live in Florida, land of cockaroaches the size of your hand... once a cockaroach jumped off the wall and landed on my hand, I promptly freaked out (the phrase "freaked out" is really quite a euphemism of the scene I caused).

I dont really have a question... but ummm... oh! Why are insects so icky?

(And yes, I'm deliberately spelling it "cockaroach").
Click to expand...

I had a cockroach sharing an apartment with me when I was in Japan. It actually took the elevator down in the evening. It waited while the doors opened, came in, and turned around like a person would. The doors would open and it would scuttle out. Sometimes I would come back in the evening and it would be waiting outside my door. I would open the door and it would scuttle in. It would run around the kitchen, and then scuttle out again. One day, when it was really really warm, I found Cockroach sitting out in the hall as usual. I tapped it with my foot. Its body shattered to cool little flaky dried-out in 98F heat pieces. That was the end of Cockroach. :(
 
I find it really amusing when people freak out over bugs.

Having been born and grewed-up in darkest Africa (well, actually it was quite bright and sunny during the day but did get quite dark at night) I am quite at home with all manner of bugs. Funny watching people from Europe coming out to visit and watching their eyes pop out at the sight of some of the critters that crawl/fly around.

A scorpion once fell in love with me. It tried to kiss me on my dangly bits.
 
Bluegill said:

That being said, I find the fact that roaches are shiny, move like the wind, and will run across my hand while I'm in bed at night, to be reason enough to detest them.
Click to expand...

The reason I hate roaches is because its impossible to swat them and even when you do, they still manage to drag themselves under the sofa, custard trail and all.

I have eaten flying ants (termites with wings). Kind of nutty flavour but far too greasy.
 
wayrad said:
"Why, we don't have cockroaches here! You must have seen a... palmetto bug !"
Click to expand...

In Johanesberg, South Africa, you get these massive cockraoch type things that scuttle under the floor-boards. They squirt sticky black stuff at you when cornered.

They are nicknamed 'Parktown Prawns' after the affluent suburb in which they terrorise the white women.

Edit: Their full name is actually Libanasidus vittatus (Kirby)

http://home.intekom.com/intekom/parktown_prawns/general.htm

Dr Toms of the Department of General Entomology at the Transvaal Museum clarifies:
"On one occasion an individual appeared in my bath when I pulled out the plug. It had managed to force its way through the grating in the drain. On another occasion one started nibbling (painlessly) at my toe while I was reading during the evening."
One of their most unpleasant doings is their habit for defaecating when threatened. The odour of their black faeces is particularly vile.
Click to expand...

They make a hissing sound too.
 
I get worried if bugs get caught my hair. I can imagine them lost and tangled, slowly strangling to death crying "help me help me!"
 
Dragonrock said:
I was wondering about the maturing of hive insects. Do they go through the stages from egg to adult as other insects do? And are these stages easily recognizable as seperate stages? For example: Do wasps, bees, or ants hatch from eggs then live for a time as non-ambulatory "caterpillars" then enter a pupal stage and emerge as adults?
Click to expand...

Have you ever dealt with paper wasps--you know, those really common wasps that you'll see buzzing around your porch or eaves all summer long? I suppose they are common all over the country, and I'd guess all over the world. They build nests under eaves, window sills, tool sheds, etc. They're easy to find. If you look at the nests, you can see the exposed chambers where they grow to adulthood, fed by their older family members.

If you look at the nest while it's still inhabited, you'll see chambers that are closed up. That's where the eggs are. When the eggs hatch, they break through the seal (or maybe the adults break it away) but they stay inside the chamber, with their little heads exposed. The adults feed them as they grow there.

Bug Girl can correct me if I'm wrong, I'm sure, but I think they stay sealed through their egg and pupal stages. Then, in their flightless larval stage, they are tended by adults. When they can fly, they crawl out and look for your picnics and make your life a nuisance.

I think this is pretty typical of these sorts of insects, and most of the common wasps and hornets and ants follow this pattern.

Have you ever turned over a rock and seen hundreds of ants scurrying with little white things in their pinchers? If you look very closely at the white things, you'll see they are either eggs (white and featureless) or pupae (looking like immobile, developing bugs). This is a really easy sight to find if you start turning rocks over in the summer.

edited to add: If I got any of this wrong, it's because I'm drawing almost completely on memories from twenty years ago, when I spent my summer turning over rocks and reading about bugs in library books.
 
I have nothing against insects (exept mosquitoes). I´ve been stung by bees and wasps, bitten by cockroaches and so on.

And I also have nothing against most arthropods. I once even kept as a pet some years ago a small pseudoscorpion that I found at an abandomned mine shaft. But spiders... EEEEEK! I don´t like spiders (try waking up in the middle of the night and see a hand-sized spider on the wall in front of you), but I know they are usefull critters...

Ticks are unexcusable, they are among the most disgusting creatures in the world. These are useless pests... Hundreds of them climbing over your leg, tring to find an opening in your clothes... EEEEEK!
 
I'm humbled. I was wrong. It's egg->larvae->pupae->adult. I can't even remember the life cycle. My ten-year-old self would be embarrassed if he were here today.
 
Mud-daubbers (waspy things in the US South who build nests of mud tubes) are cool because they snatch spiders (mostly blackwidows!), paralyse them, stuff them in their mud homes to feed to their developing brood.

Cool.

I read that the pupae eat the spiders leg-first so they stay alive and fresh longer.

Nature rocks!

Anyway, about bug-phobia. Don't read anything about mites if you have any problem with little crawlies. Your neurosis will expand by an order of magnitude.
 
boy, i went away for a while and this thread exploded!
if you really want to freak yourself out, read:

Furtive Fauna: A Field Guide to the Creatures Who Live on You
by Roger M. Knutson
 
A mate of mine used to work on a cable laying ship. He reckoned that by leaving a foot out from under the sheet overnight, the cockroaches did a splendid job of clearing off any rough skin. He offered to bring some home for use as a beauty aid; we declined politely.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom