Earwigs are a good place to start! Here’s an adorable picture by Joel Meunier of an earwig and her nymphs:

NO SHE IS NOT EATING THEM! She is picking them up and moving them to a safer location, just like a mother cat will do with her kittens. She will stand guard over them and bring them food for weeks, which is especially interesting considering they are fully capable of fending for themselves almost as soon as they hatch, actually faring quite well when “orphaned.” As long as their mother is present, however, they’ll keep close to her (or maybe she keeps them close?) until they reach a certain size.

Another insect with strong maternal instincts is the female burying beetle, who will remain underground with her larvae and the small corpse (usually a dead rodent) that her mate helped her to bury. There she chews the rotting meat into a paste that the grubs can more easily digest. She dies of old age around the time that they pupate, still beside them. The grave she created as a nursery becomes her grave as well.

Certain cockroaches such as Phlebonotus pallens carry the young under the wings, which may be fused together and arched for this purpose. The young are equipped with temporary fang-like mandibles, allowing them to pierce their mother’s back and feed on her haemolymph or “blood.” She has more than enough!

Certain tortoise beetles like this Acromis sparsa will use their bodies as a shield to protect their eggs and larvae throughout their development, though the larvae have their own interesting defense; anal hooks adapted to collect their own feces. Those are clumps of poo hanging off their tails, making them unpleasant to many predatory tastes. In this case, the young and mother probably both help to protect one another.

There are other protective mothers scattered around the Insecta, but some of their only devoted fathers are certain giant water bugs; the female glues the eggs to the male’s back and just goes on with her life, leaving him to keep them safe and hydrated!

ASK YOUR BUG QUESTIONS! No question too small or too large!

http://www.bogleech.com/comics/comic124-deadbabies.htm

sixthrock:

theclaydoughproject:

The Macro World: Grasshopper Army

Oh my god look at them EEE LITTLE CUTIES LET ME COVER MYSELF IN MILLIONS OF YOU LITTLE SWEETIES

BETTER THAN KITTENS AND PUPPIES COMBINED

I made a very dumb new comic that was really just an excuse to draw some demonic cleavage and a small child suffering, two of my very favorite things to draw.

Everyone hates screaming babies in supermarkets, but few people realize the dark truths they’re actually crying about.

A giant centipede cradling her babies :)

They look so perfectly like rubber toys! They’ll get their colors as their shells harden over many days.

(Source: nert)

mycroftismight:

This is a thing I saw when I was walking the path to the River of Souls (that’s a literal translation of the name, dramatic right) in Pirenópolis (the city/village I was staying in).

It just looks like it came directly from a Miyazaki movie.

They flow so beautifully, I can’t imagine people finding this gross or creepy. I couldn’t tell you the species exactly, but there are several types of insect larvae whose instinct is to keep in constant contact with each other as they move, forming sluglike, serpentine or carpet-like shapes. It’s thought to deter predators who think the mass is one large creature!

The specific way these crawl makes me think they’re a beetle larvae. Fly larvae demonstrate more of a “flopping” motion. I could be wrong, though.

I think this is a preview page I’ve shown before, but it’s one of my favorites. It’s also one of the only times I used gray, since a black star made it way too busy and hard to read.

It’s probably only the third or fourth most inappropriate thing in the full book.

For the whole book, I tried to ape the crappiness of actual standardized coloring book art, though I wound up drawing some things nicer than others (for instance, cleavage)

COOL MAGGOT FACTS:

1) Under normal conditions, fly maggots are always what eliminates most of an animal carcass on land. The recognized stages of decomposition are dependent on their presence.

2) Many humans find everything about a maggot abhorrent, but it wouldn’t be such an efficient scavenger if it differed in any way. They are pure utility, stripped down to the bare minimal anatomy for scavenging!

3) Blowfly maggots can technically be considered “aquatic,” as they will spend most of their life submerged head-down in the fluids of decaying meat. Like water-dwelling insects, they breathe by “snorkeling” through pores near their anus!

4) Maggots have a pair of tusk-like hooks to help get a grip on rotting tissues, but no means of biting or chewing. Like adult flies, they secrete a digestive enzyme and suck up the liquefied food.

5) Maggots actually greatly reduce bacterial levels around them, as they are competing with the microbes for food.

6) Most insects still have six true legs even as larvae, sometimes just greatly reduced. Not so for fly maggots, who lack even an internal trace of appendages.

7) Not only do they lack jaws or limbs, but fly maggots are among the only insect larvae without “head cases.” Other insect larvae have fully developed heads and jaws, protected by a skull-like exoskeleton similar to the head of an adult insect. Except for its hooks or barbs, a maggot is squishy and naked from end to end!

8) Maggots function like organic drills. Cone shaped, with the mouth at the small end, their undulations work them corkscrew-like into meat.

I’ve posted this photo before and I’ll probably post it again. It was the first time I ever got to see what a maggot’s face actually LOOKS like, and I fell in love instantly. I mean, I already liked maggots, but that was before I knew they were hot-dog walrus puppet monsters in parkas. That’s also a bacterium hanging out in the upper middle - the entire maggot head that we’re seeing here is barely visible to the naked eye.

I don’t really play video games anymore, but I just caught wind that someone bothered to create a Skyrim mod that replaces all giant spider enemies with bears.

Seriously?

Another preview page from my horror coloring book, packed with disturbing and nonsensical images like whatever is happening here. People can buy the 150 page version here, or if they want me to earn more money, here.