Yellow spider on a yellow egg sac

An orb weaver spider and her egg sack in the lowland Amazon. Pretty stellar colors 🕷️🕸️

The face of the wasp above

Poor wasp

A wasp with the threads of a fungal fruiting body growing out of it

Just a murderous fungus having taken over a wasp and compelled it to die in a place advantageous to finding more victims. With its tiny spores floating off through the air in hopes of just one landing on an exoskeleton.. nothing in the rainforest wants anything to do with this little scene here…

A black and yellow insect next to a bundle of foam

Hello from a Frog Hopper and a spittle nest I found along the Napo River in Ecuador. All that foam is how the nymph frog hopper keeps itself safe from harm. I love this photo because if you look at the largest bubble you can see the nymph living in there(!!). Tiny little worlds everywhere

..I mean since you asked.. 😅
Here’s a baby katydid mimicking a wasp— he will wave those antennae around and move on the leaf JUST like a little wasp -&- next to him is a fly also mimicking a wasp- but pretending her ARMS are antennae. You can see her waving them around desperately trying to fool me

..I mean since you asked.. 😅
Here’s a baby katydid mimicking a wasp— he will wave those antennae around and move on the leaf JUST like a little wasp -&- next to him is a fly also mimicking a wasp- but pretending her ARMS are antennae. You can see her waving them around desperately trying to fool me

Woolly Monkey eating fruit

Capuchin monkey

Titis Monkey

Spider Monkey

I saw these monkeys all in one day, in the lowland Amazon. I almost fell out of the canoe seeing the endangered spider monkey. An incredible forest 🧪🐒🪾

A photo of leaf litter on the ground. The katydid is here so where

Can you find him? I promise he’s in this photo

Bright colors on the back wing of a katydid splayed out

A dead leaf mimic katydid

Hello there. Here’s the 1st wonder of the world- a peacock katydid displaying for us here in the Amazon 😍

😍

A green caterpillar with false eyes on its back

A caterpillar with false eyes on its head

Caterpillar? Don’t want to be eaten as a snack? Here’s a popular strategy I found this week in the cloud forest.

A view into the foothills of the mountains that expands into the Amazon basin

A view into the Amazon from Sumaco Volcano. So many little worlds playing out in the forest below. An entire universe of beetles and monkeys and birds and humans. You could spend all your life learning about the ants in one of those little trees down there. Overwhelmingly beautiful.

Red green and yellow beetle on a leaf

Red green and yellow beetle on a leaf

I found this rove beetle friend on the rainforest floor. They are so so fast, you can imaging me chasing it around with my camera just rolling around in the leaf litter. Just unbelievable colors. In person the rainbow iridescence is stunning. It’s hard to say much here beyond just wow.

A dead weevil with a fungus fruiting body growing out of it

Look. At. This. (!). A fungus spore landed on this weevil. Grew inside and caused it to climb to the top of this plant- while the fungus killed it. Consumed its body. Used that energy to shoot up a red fruiting body to release more spores. To zombify more weevils. A mind controlling killer fungus.

A gull drinking water on the wing

Cannot forget Boneparte’s Gull

A breaching humpback whale

Bubble netting whales

Seals sunning

A humpback whale fluke in front of a mountain

Some vertebrates I found in Southeast Alaska. (It was really great to finally see bubble netting)

😍

A colorful penensula of trees with a long dramatic waterfall in the background

The entrance to Fords Terror. A fjord just off of Endicott Arm in Alaska. You can only get into (or out of) this fjord at high slack tide- for about twenty minutes a day. More photos of the stunning effects of glaciers on mountain rock soon to come

A humpback whale checking out her above water surroundings (Spyhopping)

Glittery green weevil

Close up of the glitter

A weevil at Wildsumaco in Ecuador. Easily found by following the trail of glitter he leaves behind everywhere he goes.

But really- this glitter weevil is always amazing to see and a real wonder of the world. Endless forms most beautiful, indeed.

A very blue and very huge iceberg in front of a solid rock wall

What spectacular shades of blue. An iceberg just off the face of the Dawes Glacier in Southeast Alaska. That little spec in front of the upper left part of the berg is an Arctic Tern, absolutely dwarfed by this chunk of mountain-carving-ice.

A stick mimicking katydid

Just a stick cleaning its antennae

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A bug infected by cordyceps fungus, which has its fruiting bodies growing out of it

🎶horror music🎶 Another cordyceps victim. This particular species of fungus is targeting a different insect. It’s taken over the bugs body and moved it up a tree, where it killed it and consumed it (leaving behind the exoskeleton) using the energy to grow those orange mushrooms and spread more spores

Franz Anthony's drawing of Facivermis, a strange stem group onychophoran which has elongate, feathery anterior appendages for filter feeding. It is in a tube embedded in the sediment and has a blobby bit at the posterior end. A second individual is shown hiding in its tube, with only the feathery appendages visible

There have been THREE velvet worm (Onychophora) posts in the last day or so, requiring a megathread. I'll add one of their coolest fossils first, from when they were exclusively marine, drawn by @franzanth.bsky.social for @arthropoda-curator.bsky.social

(see next 3 skeets in thread...) 🧪

I love this! I guess I’ll have to visit NZ again soon

ME too

Right??? I think this just CONSTANTLY