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Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Huntsman spiders (Family Sparassidae)

It is apparently an eight-eyed spider of which I did not get the opportunity to confirm, I meant the how many eyes.

Quite big in size compared to most of the spiders we commonly see, this specimen measures about 30 mm across. It has been reported that many of this species can grow much larger than this.
As usual such encounters are always by chance, while I was on one of my week end sojourn of jungle hiking, it was dashing across the road when I notice it, surprisingly it stop half way across and took refuge maybe forgetting it is out of its element, it was on wide open tar road, wrong camouflage background, so much for being eight eyed.
After a couple of shots from my camera it took off and made it all the way to the other side of the road. Now, the million dollar question, why would a spider cross the road?

Saturday, January 7, 2012

Identifying insects

Coming across insects that I could not identify is rather frustrating while identifying an insect wrongly is worse than not being able to identify it at all. Friends have often console me that there are thousands of insect species yet to be identified even by keen entomologist, so what more being just a week end amateur taking photos now and than?

Unidentified Beetles


But that doesn’t make me feel any better! Sometimes it gets to be an obssession to just find out which species it comes from or family it belongs to. Time and again I sometime hit walls with a picture of an insect that will not yield its identity. What does it matters if I cannot identify a particular insect, you might well ask. I for sure will not die if I cannot find out nor will I starve or feel pain but my burning curiosity will not be quenched, it is like a journey with no ending or a task half complete, itching and prodding incessantly to find an end to it.
Or perhap it’s the sign of ageing but surely I maybe getting old but not that old yet? Senility runs on my side of the family as often reminded by my wife, could it be? No...I choose not to believe any of that!

For all its worth, if any readers here can identify any of the insects in this posting, please write and make my day!

Unidentified butterflies



And for those who wish to inform me the species of the insect in the picture is a butterfly or a beetle, you have been a great help, thank you very much and I would like to meet you in person to see how you look like. Nothing much can surprise me anymore I actually do know a person who tells me such things with a straight face, while looking at me in a funny way wondering why I do not know my insects. It is scary.........