Tuesday, September 27, 2005
Praying Mantis moth buffet
One of the windows to my office currently has twelve praying mantises feasting off of moths. I have been watching the big green insects, they average about five inches in length, since they started appearing a couple weeks ago. They are pretty clumsy. It takes them alot of attempts to actually nab a moth and often even then the moths can escape. They crawl along the window screens chasing after the moths and repeatedly grab at them until they get one. Even so they definitely eat more moths, one of Arivaca Man's worst foes, than most other allied creatures. I have not seen Blaster eat a single moth since I got here.
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7 comments:
Great title! And hey, you are definitely expanding my knowledge! I just HAD TO look up "tie dye" and "praying mantis" and "moth" using Google images :) Tie dye shirts seem silly but funny, do you mean the native over there are all hippies?? A praying mantis sure seem like a monster to me, I think I have seen them in(at?) our zoo a few years back. But I can't really figure out what MOTH is. Is it the kind of butterfly that likes night life? What's the difference between moths and butterflies anyway?
PS Read your previous post too and it made me somewhat mad. BTW, have you read "balticblog" lately? The post of 9-22-2005? There's an interesting photo attached, makes me real SICK!
Thanks for the comment. Arivaca has lots of hippies. Sorry, my Estonian-English dictionaries are all in storage. Otherwise I would give you the Estonian words for these things. A moth is like a night time butterfly, but it has fringed feelers instead of smooth ones. They also eat wool instead of nectar. They are attracted to the light of the house come to the windows at night. There the praying mantises eat them.
I just went and read the Baltic blog entry. Thanks for the tip. It is sick that some people celebrate the oppression of other people.
Oh, goodie, time to play the scientist again. Moths do not eat ANYTHING!! At least the adults that you see flying around do not. Moth larva (or moth caterpillars), mostly eat plant leaves, although there is at least one species that will eat fabric. Moths are also amazing because they "see" chemical trails. That is why they usually appear to fly so haphazardly, they are following those chemical trails. Once they turn into the flying adult stage, they only live for a couple of days. Their sole purpose at this stage is to mate and lay eggs.
I also read balticblog and found that post just a tad bit disconcerting.
Thanks for the clarification Chris.
lol... anytime. Just let me know when I am too annoying, though.
I wish I knew what "tad bit disconcerting" means. Is it confusing or embarrassing? My dictionary gives 2 matches :(
PS We have here one sort of tiny little "moths" that eat wool, btw. But they are quite different from those I saw on Google images, they are pale gray, less than 1 cm (2,5 cm = 1 inch)long and live only indoors I guess, well at least I have never seen them outside. If you get to see one in your rooms it means that you will soon find your woollen socks half eaten :P
Kristin,
In this context Chris is using the word disconcerting to mean disturbing.
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