stshloop - Tumblr blog

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Let’s talk about Singapore wildlife woo!!

As a city with lots of greenery, animals can be found everywhere across the place. When you find a moderately-sized lizard (invasive unfortunately), or perhaps a wasp nest on a random sign, you know they did something right.

With a similar climate compared to Hong Kong, you can find some familiar faces, such as this Okinawa mud wasp.

However, the native wildlife for the most part, is completely different. Check out this wasp moth (close relatives can still be found in HK) and stingless bee. Maybe even a wandering glider, or an amorphoscelis mantis.

Common birds include the zebra dove, spotted dove, house crow and javan myna (I don’t like them).

Also saw a collared kingfisher and a peacock (invasive).

There are actually 2 species of monitor in Singapore: the Asian water monitor and the clouded monitor, which I unfortunately didn’t get the chance to meet, maybe when I come back here later…

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Foraging

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Your regular reminder that wasps are “defensive,” not “aggressive,” since 100% of their fighting instincts are to make sure big mammals stay away from their babies. They want you to see their bright colors and know that they hurt super bad so you won’t be foolish enough to find the nest and eat the larvae, which big mammals have been doing for so long, it’s what selectively bred wasps to be that way to begin with. This does include primates, including humans, in fact bee and wasp larvae have been staple parts of the human diet throughout history and there are still places where specifically types of paper wasp are bred as food!

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Art Fight attack #1:

“Your scientist was so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should.”

For ghostlycorvid on artfight!

This is my first artfight attack ever so I wanted to start it off with a bang. Won’t be drawing something of this scale again for a while

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I really like hornets.

Personally I’ve never really get why people are so afraid of these little guys (that is under the circumstance they never had bad experiences/phobias). They’re just bees just less fuzzy. Usually i find them hanging around flowers, maybe pick up on some fallen fruit, or collecting plant material for nest building. In winter, they wander around barbecue and camp sites, in search for something sweet. They aren’t out for our blood or property, simply born with a sweet mandible.

This fellow, is a yellow-legged hornet. They are one of, if not the most common species of hornet out of the 8 we have around.

They love feeding on nectar, and sometimes get pollen stuck on her little setae, though maybe not as good as bees.

Yesterday, I saw them feeding on the lychee that fell from the trees. They can be slightly intimidating in numbers, but they’re just busy getting the sustenance they need.

Another species that also enjoyed the sweet fruit is the black-tailed hornet (not to be confused with the similarly-coloured Southern giant hornet, which can be identified by much larger gena, or “cheeks” than the black-tails), more of an uncommon sight here in Hong Kong. Much bigger and more fearsome than the yellow-legged hornet, but a sweet treat is always welcomed. In fact, adults only feed on sugary food, and they hunt and scavenge meat mainly to feed their young.

There are also some other less note-worthy species when it comes to observations include the black-shield hornet and the lesser banded hornet. They are all found foraging in flowerbeds.

The more you put down your fear, you will begin to realise the beauty of these buzzers. Caution should of course be exercised still, but I hope you find a new appreciation for them too :D

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so funny to me when people draw bugs without their abdomens

my bugger in christ. your organs. they're gone.

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Hey yall, welcome to my Tumblr gallery! Here are some of my most well known/favourite pieces of work I've made.

If you couldn't tell I have a focus on the reptilian side of palaeontology and especially subjects that have strong ties to aquatic environments.

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Alright let's try this again.

Hello Tumblr people, I'm Min Tayza (you can call me Min Tayza for short) and you might know me from Twitter or Instagram with the handle @sketchy_as_fork.

I'm an artist working digitally on Procreate, painting dinosaurs, pterosaurs, plesiosaurs and all the other -saurs, with the occasional Pokémon, a fusion or two, thrown in for flavor.

I've been meaning to reboot this old blog for a while now and the recent rate limit shenanigans on Twitter seem like the right time to commit to the jump. I'll still be on Twitter but I'm going to try to use Tumblr as well.

Yeah here's some of my recent paintings and a couple I'm really proud of, I hope you like it, reblog it, comment, and whatever else you do here to support artists. I'll be making separate posts for individual paintings soon.

also I really really want to find my mutuals and artists I followed on Twitter and I want them to find me so if reblogging helps with that I appreciate it thank yewww

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Clever girl.

This little cutie is Portia, a beautiful, and probably the most intelligent spider that we know of.

This is what peak performance looks like. Sorry I didn’t make the rules. Spiders in the genus Portia are intensively studied for their seemly intelligent hunting behaviour. They are known to learn from mistakes if they fail a hunt, and can even plan routes when tackling dangerous prey, such as an orb-weaver spider. After all, one miscalculation can be fatal. They have also been observed to pluck the webs of spiders to lure them into a vulnerable spot. Cool, right?

Not far away from the female, is this spindly male Portia. Maybe not quite as flashy, but really cool still.

You may notice that he lost 2 of his limbs and a pedipalp. Portia are actually pretty well-known for their tendency to lose limbs readily, and females are known for their AGGRESSIVE mating behaviour, whether it’d be eating before and after mating. Wonder if he got laid, whether successful or unsuccessful, or simply looking for a lady.

I’ll be visiting the place tomorrow morning, let’s see if we find more (:

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What are some good snacks I can set out for wild paper wasps? There's a nest being built right in my doorway, they're very friendly and downright docile, and I want to be a good neighbor and set out something tasty for them.

paper wasps mainly drink flower nectar and hunt caterpillars to feed their larvae, and receive nutritious salivary secretions a from their larval sisters, offered in return for the caterpillar mush. they might also drink a bit of the caterpillars’ blood while chopping them up.

I’ve actually struggled to handfeed paper wasps hunting caterpillars in my kale, they seem so focused on hunting (and probably frightened of me) that they ignore perfectly plump caterpillars I’ve already plucked for them. maybe you can plant some native, habitat-appropriate wildflowers to feed both wasps and various moths and butterflies, but that’s probably too long-term for this year’s wasps.

I think the most useful thing you can do to help them out is leave out a dish of plain water with some small stones in it! paper wasps get thirsty on hot days and will need fresh water more than food. bees and solitary wasps will also probably visit for a drink

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saw this Rhombodera basalis mantis nymph was reaching out for a perch and I offered it my hand. stayed remarkably calm and still before I took it to the other side of the path

Rhombodera is one of several mantis genera that have developed a flat, shield-like pronotum. not one of the more delicate mantises, this one was impressively bulky and heavy but still so elegant

extremely powerful forearms. I would’ve liked to see it hunting!

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Wasp-mimic bee fly, Systropus arizonicus, Bombyliidae

Found in the southwestern United States and into Mexico

Photo 1 by kueda, 2 by rbehrstock, 3-4 by silversea_starsong, and 5 (for scale) by sambiology

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Pileated Woodpecker

Always thought of woodpeckers as being kind of freaky little guys but I guess I'd be a bit stranger too if my tongue wrapped round my brain.

Had a ton of fun with this one. :)

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fun Singapore moment: I was walking along the trail at Bukit Timah, eyes to the ground looking for flatworms in the drainage channel, completely oblivious to the fact I was about to walk directly into a 3-meter long keeled rat snake. I’d thought it was a branch until I realized it was staring at me.

it was very polite though, and after I apologized for not noticing it returned to calmly foraging for a meal in the leaf litter. I followed it for a few minutes until it decided the other side of the path might have better food.

an impressive animal, probably the largest wild snake I’ve ever seen. I hope it found a skink or perhaps a juicy frog

(Pytas carinata)

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here’s some people holding European robins so you can pretend you’re holding one and feel happy