Vote for your favourites in our top ten animal figures of 2017 poll!
Admittedly, Pipa pipa is not really among the most beautiful anurans. Really june bugs? The only nasty thing about cicadas (at least those of warm countries) I can think of is their call that can give you a headache. I was collecting dragonflies in the Kaokoveld, Namibia, in 1996 and the cicadas nearby were so loud I found it hard to concentrate. Well, I'm not supposed to dislike any animal species. But I think triatomine kissing bugs (those neotropical ones that are vectors of the Chagas disease). Our department has a parasitology study group that focuses on them (as far as I know they are rearing all species that are known as Chagas vectors, they are fed on chicken) and they are colourful but incredibly big for haematophagous insects.In fact the world's largest haematophagous insect is among them, Dipetalogaster maxima:The photo shows a nymph with a swollen abdomen from its meal. Adults grow to over 40 mm and drink several ml of blood at once!
Spiders , and i will never meet this
Worst is when the surinam toad babies start to emerge. There are videos on youtube I think. I need to install the 'yuk' smiley!
Is there any particular animal that you find personally disagreeable? Spiders? Snakes? Bats? Rats? They are the usual suspects. For me, just thinking about the Surinam toad makes my skin crawl. The Surinam toad's skin, of course, crawls literally, when its babies emerge from their little pockets. Fascinating, but urg!
No, no animals creep me out. Large crabs make me a little nervous, though. A blue crab punched a hole through the center of my fingernail once - it would have been pretty funny if it hadn't hurt so much. A stream of blood shot several inches straight up through the hole. I had a divot and a little round bruise under my nail for weeks. So now, I'm perhaps over-cautious when it comes to crabs. I think I've finally overcome a similar situation with red paper wasps. I got stung on the throat by one when I was a kid and it made me very leery of the things. Back a few years ago I was helping with a cottonmouth study. I was much more scared of the wasps we occasionally encountered than the pitvipers. Oddly, my phobia seemed to be specifically attached to the red, orange, or brown paper wasps. Yellow-and-black paper wasps, and all other wasps, bothered me not at all. I've made it a point to at least pretend they don't scare me, though, and it seems to have paid off. The fact that they're so awesome has surely helped.
Yeah, crab claws are powerful! They crush molluscs with those things; a fingernail is no barrier. I deserved the crab pinch, though. Where I grew up, there are no crabs, but plenty of crayfish. If you grasp a crayfish's body properly, it can't reach you with its claws. So I picked up this crab by the rear of its body, foolishly assuming that it also had a convenient handle I could hold it by with impunity. In retrospect it seems obvious: if you don't want a crab to pinch you, hold it by its pinchers. Re: wasps - fake it 'til you make it! I petted a paper wasp today. Soon you will too!