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!

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

officialnotebook:

Insect Camouflage 

This might be some of the most impressive camouflage I’ve ever seen. Looks like the caterpillar of Euthalia aconthea gurda, here it is in the open:

Baby earwig clinging to a pinhead (from here)

I’ve probably posted this before, but here it is again!

These are the larvae of, I believe, spiny lobsters. They float in the ocean water feeding on plankton, and are as flat as paper.

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)

vandergrafvanny:

Look at this fucking asshole caterpillar

I featured these in this article but the animations are a far better explanation. They’re among several Hawaiian caterpillars which evolved to fill a predatory niche, unlike anywhere else in the world!

It’s been forever since I’ve drawn some cartoon animals for my store. People have been buying the parasite items like crazy lately, so here’s some spiders!

Click the link above if you want to get these on zazzle magnets and shirts and stuff!

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.

Scanning electron microscope image of paper wasp larvae. One day, they’ll be sleek, venomous aerial hunters with highly advanced senses, but for now, they’re eyeless, limbless little marshmallows who can’t even feed themselves. Like a mother bird, the adult wasps collect prey such as caterpillars and pre-chew them for each individual grub.

I’m always amazed how many people think they need to destroy paper wasp nests on sight. You can get quite close to them before the adults start to evaluate your threat level. They’ll stay hunched over their babies, sizing you up until you really seem to be showing aggression (rapid motion towards them, heavy breathing, any elevated excitement in their direction) and even then will try to scare you off before resorting to a sting. It’s the last thing their instinct tells them to do, because stinging a big mammal is usually suicide, and if they die, their young will starve.

Now here’s the opposite end of a maggot, sticking up out of some raw meat to breathe!

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.

Me vs. Arachnophobia Chapter 906

So, somebody asked one of my favorite tumblr’s to stop tagging spiders with “adorable” and they agreed.

I don’t need to tell anyone that this makes me rage inside. As I’ve ranted about extensively, no animal should be segregated over an unnatural human flaw. If you’re so terrified of spiders you can’t stand to even see a picture of them, that only means you need to see more pictures of them. No, not because I want you to be scared, but because sooner or later you will become less scared, and everybody in the world deserves that, no matter what it is that scares them or to what degree of severity. Even the most DEBILITATING possible cases of arachnophobia ever recorded have been cured - and I mean cured, completely - through nothing more than exposure. Just seeing more spiders, bit by bit, automatically reduced the anxiety patients felt towards them. Eventually they went from panic attacks at the very word “spider” to comfortably holding live tarantulas. It’s been done time and time again, whenever someone felt that their fear was serious enough to seek help.

You probably aren’t even as afraid as those people, so why give up and give in by avoiding even harmless little internet pictures? You WILL get used to images of spiders over time if you keep looking at them. That’s a tested fact. And once you’re at least capable of looking at them there’s nowhere else to go but to develop an active appreciation for them, as all living things deserve.

Block me or unfollow me if you must, but I vow to ensure that the “adorable” tag - among others - will have spiders in it every week that I’m both alive and have a tumblr.

I found this photograph years ago with the title “starlet arthropod larva” and no further explanation…it’s some kind of larval insect, probably in an early instar that will quickly change to a more conventional shape.

EDIT: the image is apparently a very tiny fossil. Still can’t find a species name, if it even has one.