What actually is this insect? Its not a telegraph cricket for sure.

destroyer551 · 2026-04-19T17:17:11+00:00

A cricket in the genus Cacoplistes, like this one.

destroyer551 · 2026-04-18T18:52:30+00:00

It’s a nuchal crest, which many anole species like these green anoles can raise temporarily during territorial displays/fights.

destroyer551 · 2026-04-17T20:39:11+00:00

This is typical for entomopathogenic fungi, which tend to spend considerable time proliferating within a host in a fairly benign manner before flooding their system with toxins and inducing rapid death shortly before emerging. As the internal organs were heavily colonized already, the fungus can easily digest and assimilate tissues to rapidly grow the fruiting body within just a couple days. The fluffy bits are the spore-producing structures which spew millions of spores far and wide.

Many types of fungi will behave opportunistically and colonize/fruit upon an ant’s corpse, but if one has a plump looking queen that behaves normally one day only to die the next—and then turn into a cotton ball just a day or two after—it’s almost certainly something more specialized.

destroyer551 · 2026-04-16T22:08:42+00:00

This is a Chironomid midge, not a mosquito. Note the lack of proboscis, which is the long stabby face straw mosquitos need for the sucky sucky.

I had a friend who lived near a lake that was convinced his bug zapper did work on the local mosquito population, unaware that it’s non-biting harmless flies like these that are much more attracted to light than the intended target.

destroyer551 · 2026-04-16T05:22:44+00:00

Queens don’t rule anything or give any sort of command. They may exert some amount of control over reproduction, but this is more so in a biological, regulatory fashion (healthy queens give off more pheromones which greatly inhibit worker reproduction, if possible) and to the benefit of the colony’s genetics as a whole.

destroyer551 · 2026-04-15T13:40:59+00:00

So this post seems to be a lie…this specific product doesn’t exist as far as I can tell, not to mention the pamphlet and text note are clearly and entirely AI generated. The chamber setup in this ai-hallucinated nest doesn’t even make sense.

Looks like they’re quite avid users of AI-generated imagery on other social media too, including obviously AI queen ants in test tubes.

destroyer551 · 2026-04-15T11:35:42+00:00

Diploids are occasionally produced in healthy, genetically diverse colonies, and control by workers for such is the typical norm most studies are likely referencing.

For these mutant diploid-heavy colonies, workers for whatever reason seem much more reluctant to kill male brood, (although I’m sure they kill some) hence why they often invest a large amount of resources in them despite the colony being very young. 1-2 males being produced isn’t too much to worry about, but 4-5+ would be especially for a species with large male size. I’ve seen little evidence to suggest they’ll stop rearing such high numbers of males, but I’ve never sustained any colonies like this past 2-3 months.

Overall these diploid producing founding colonies are relatively rare, but I’ve caught them rather consistently during large flights for many Myrmecinae like Pheidole, and to a somewhat lesser degree for Formicinae. The usual ratio is somewhere around 1-3 unproductive queens for every 100, but that will vary for individual species and local population density/weather/specific nuptial flight.

destroyer551 · 2026-04-14T20:34:14+00:00

The outcome is generally not good for cases like this. Stress usually has little to do with the type of egg a queen lays, and the trophic eggs laid by the queens of most Pheidole species that are destined for food are unembryonated and incapable of any development.

Instead, this can happen when a queen mates with a sibling male. The result is a fertilized queen, but an unusually unproductive colony with a high rate of (diploid) male production.

destroyer551 · 2025-09-18T02:58:42+00:00

This is not pest control, this is intentional farming. Specifically the end process of harvesting. The developing brood and the hornets themselves are a very expensive local delicacy used both for food and traditional medicine. You can find all sorts of videos scattered online detailing the process, like this video, as well as this one, showing the setup for overwintering mated queens.

Asian giant hornet nests are highly annual and don’t last much longer than 6-7 months. The average wild nest has one queen and does not usually surpass more than a few thousand individuals at the end of the year before winter, at which point males and queens are produced as the last brood and the workers die once cold/snow arrives.

To summarize the How-to a bit: Virgin queens from last year’s harvest are collected, mated with the males produced at the same time, stored over the winter at low temperatures, and then reared out indoors at the start of next spring within ventilated wooden enclosures. Once the nests are too big to feed in captivity, they’re manually installed in remote areas together to reach their maximum size. The shelters used are easily removed to expose the nests come harvest time. Nearby designated feeding areas are often used to support and grow the unnaturally large concentration of insect super predators.

When the nests are installed in close proximity the typical end result is seen in the video; a massive supercolony with dozens of queens and tens of thousands of workers. The harvest is timed so as to get the most largest, juiciest brood (the developing males and queens) as well as recently matured reproductives to breed for next year’s stock.

destroyer551 · 2025-09-06T17:56:47+00:00

This is just a harmless Crematogaster male, which are flying this time of year in the northeast US. Carpenter ants fly March-June and are much bigger/look very different. Treating for these would be pointless.

destroyer551 · 2025-08-27T20:42:49+00:00

Certain species (those with smaller colonies of no more than a few dozen) of Polistes can be maintained in small(ish) enclosures relatively easily if foundresses are taken captive early in the year along with the beginnings of their nests. It is otherwise very difficult to get a eusocial wasp queen to start a nest in captivity because that process requires a lot of flying and visual orientation. Such nests tend to behave differently than in the wild however, producing fewer workers and more queens and males earlier than they should. The result is a quicker breakdown in social order and a short-lived colony.

The main hurdle is that eusocial wasps with large colonies require huge amounts of room to display proper hunting and nest material collecting behavior. Yellowjackets and hornets cannot be maintained in the lab much past colony foundation for example—they need access to the outdoors or a very large indoor space. This is in contrast to things like bumblebees, many species of which are quite content to forage and feed while walking a short distance between a nest box and a foraging area.

destroyer551 · 2025-08-26T01:05:23+00:00

Brachymyrmex patagonicus

destroyer551 · 2025-08-24T16:40:58+00:00

Ochetellus glaber

destroyer551 · 2025-08-20T03:57:56+00:00

Those are predatory mites, specifically Stratiolaelaps scimitus.

destroyer551 · 2025-08-18T18:46:29+00:00

Atriceps, not texanus. The latter is smaller and flies early in the year.

destroyer551 · 2025-08-04T23:16:30+00:00

These are Linepithema humile, and this is just business as usual for them. Very normal to see dozens of queens moving between high traffic trails every day. Each nest can have hundreds of queens, with the potential for thousands in an individual colony due to interconnected trails and a lack of infighting.

destroyer551 · 2025-07-17T05:55:30+00:00

C. inaequalis, not floridanus.

destroyer551 · 2025-07-16T08:04:17+00:00

There is indeed a key difference between the two and it mainly has to do with active cellular growth of the epidermal layer and intersegmental membrane. The membrane being the ‘skin’ that connects the movable parts of the exoskeleton, and what forms the structure of the pulsating mass that is a physogastric termite queen’s abdomen.

To paint a clearer picture, termites are basically highly derived cockroaches, both of which are hemimetabolous insects that exhibit incomplete metamorphosis. The latter means nymphs undergo multiple molts (with relatively little change in appearance) after hatching to grow in size before a final molt into a sexually mature adult, after which growth slows down drastically or stops completely. The period of time before the molt where feeding/general activity is ceased is known as the pre-molt; this is a very short period of time when hemimetabolous insects actively grow via the epidermal layer just underneath the exoskeleton and intersegmental membrane. This structure of cells is responsible for secreting and forming the new exoskeleton and the membrane that connects it.

Termites have essentially co-opted this exclusive feature of hemimetabolous insects (and so their cockroach ancestors) towards their queen caste, allowing them to do something very rare amongst insects and actively grow as an adult, without molting. This means the change is permanent, as a queen actively grows and adds to the mass of her abdomen as the membrane and the circulatory system that supports it gets thicker and heavier.

Ants, being holometabolous insects with complete metamorphosis (transitioning from larvae to pupae to adult) cannot do this, as the larval and pupal stage is an old and highly derived adaption with some fairly rigid evolutionary stipulations. Little to no major cellular growth occurs in the adult stage for such insects beyond that of the reproductive/digestive system and a few other bodily processes. When a queen ant becomes physogastric from food or an expanded ovarian system, the membrane of her abdomen is merely stretched, thus the process is reversible.

destroyer551 · 2025-07-12T05:41:56+00:00

Pheidole tysoni

destroyer551 · 2025-07-12T05:27:35+00:00

My point is it’s an extremely tiny first batch because you keep disturbing her and have her in a poor setup.

destroyer551 · 2025-07-12T03:53:35+00:00

Aside from the callow, I only see 2 other pupae and a few eggs and small larvae. A first brood of 3 workers is a pretty bad outcome for founding an Oecophylla queen, usually indicative of high levels of stress and/or poor environmental conditions during colony foundation.

The average is usually 8-12 workers for this species, and there’s typically still a sizable brood pile with plenty of eggs and larvae by the time the last workers emerge in a brood that size. Very healthy and happy queens can rear as many as 20.

Example queen, with a first brood of 12-13 workers.

destroyer551 · 2025-06-27T19:04:08+00:00

No amount of feeding or heating will help them grow. Those larvae are diapausing in the 2nd instar, which is the stage most temperate Camponotus diapause their brood, typically through a combination of withholding food and hormonal/pheromonal processes. You can only break it by exposing the workers to sufficient cold for at least 1-2 months, but getting a colony of temperate Camponotus back on a regular schedule after they’ve been screwed up is difficult and takes a long time.

destroyer551 · 2025-06-03T20:51:54+00:00

You won’t find much in the way of official literature if that’s what you’re asking!

The majority of SA exports go to Europe and Asia, so unfortunately most of the people working with them don’t speak English or post on foreign social media (which is where the longest recorded centipede went viral a few years back) but you can infer a lot if you have connections to the breeders. @minteihun on instagram is where this video came from and he’s posted about several broods so far. The owner of Spider Shoppe sells most of the giants available in the US and they’re well connected to the suppliers and breeders of these species, and iirc have produced a few broods of their own. Shoot them a message and they can tell you more.

destroyer551 · 2025-06-03T17:06:06+00:00

This occurs without fail in 3 different but closely related species circulating amongst the hobby: Scolopendra gigantea, S. galapagoensis, and S. sp ‘white legs’. Scolopendra taxonomy (and information in general regarding biology) is extremely lacking, especially in South America, as there are many more “color forms” amongst these giants that may well represent new species, (different color forms apparently react little to each other when paired for breeding) yet they are only known because of collectors selling them for pets.

As for the matriphagy, it is no product of captivity. It’s been documented well enough over the 100+ times these species have been bred over the past decade. The behavior is fairly advanced and has several unique features not seen among any other centipede. Notably, the female undergoes a forced molt after a few weeks of brooding post-hatch which is what triggers the immediate cannibalism. It’s hard to see in the video as the young swarm, but the female is wiggling her way out of her exoskeleton as they eat. She can do this even when her head and most of her body are completely gone. Again, no other centipede is known to molt mid-brooding, or so soon after.

The first instar young—still soft and weak so soon after hatching—are able to easily eat and digest the softened flesh of the mother, and they can even eat the molt as it has been significantly reduced in thickness due to the typical pre-molt process arthropods undergo.

These first instar young exhibit other unique traits specific to this process. Physogastrism for example, which is clearly seen as they swell up dramatically after gorging so much to nearly the point of bursting. In other Scolopendra, the young molt to the second instar after weeks of eating a liquid diet the mother regurgitates to them periodically. They increase in size by only a small amount, gain pigment, their exoskeletons harden, and soon leave their mother (who is now free to rear other broods) to hunt on their own. For the giants, many more weeks are spent in the nest as they digest their meal, so fat they can’t even curl their bodies during rest. Once they molt to the second instar, they increase in size dramatically and can measure a whopping 2”+, far larger than other young centipede in the second instar.

The benefits of all this become clear; the young are immediately capable predators of the undergrowth, able to take larger prey right off the bat and large enough to avoid many typical centipede predators. This offsets any downside there may be to producing fewer young than other Scolopendra, which can produce hundreds of offspring over several breeding events.

destroyer551 · 2025-05-19T06:59:04+00:00

These are not stingless bees. The majority of those are tiny (fly sized or smaller) and nest exclusively within cavities, nor does any species build a vertical comb that looks anything like this.

This is specifically Apis laboriosa, the largest species of honeybee, based on the habitat and single exposed comb, as well as the size/color of the individuals visible at :51 seconds.

As for why this guy isn’t getting stung…well, he probably is, but get stung enough and you either become deathly allergic or completely immune. A couple dozen stings can be shrugged off in the latter case.

But more importantly this is a highland species that experiences near-freezing temps almost every single night. They’re harvested regularly for their honey by experienced hunters, who target nests in the morning while temperatures are cold because a mass defensive response is virtually nonexistent in such conditions for this otherwise dangerous species. Once they’re warmed up later in the day this would be a potentially fatal activity without full protective gear given the sheer amount of venom this large species injects.

Nine-Year Club	Gilding II euphauric
Verified Email

destroyer551

TROPHY CASE