Velvet mite, unknown species, Microtrombidiidae
Photographed in Thailand by Nicky Bay // Website // Facebook
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Omg, red velvet mites are so cute?
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Today's sketch, the red velvet mite. I couldn't think of anything I wanted to draw, so this was what my roommate gave me.
Comm me here: https://ko-fi.com/ormspryde/commissions
[ID: A pixel drawing of a small red bug on a grey background. /ID]
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These non-parasitic mites feed largely on pollen and emerge during spring from eggs that were laid during the previous summer. One can easily spot these critters crawling around due to their striking bright red color, making them an object of both fascination and fear, given the association of red with danger.
The vivid coloration of these mites has not been subject to much scientific scrutiny. However, a study by researchers from Hosei University and Kyoto University, Japan, now suggests that the bright red pigment in these mites has a specific protective function.
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[ID: Three pictures of a red mite sitting on mossy wood.]
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Red velvet mite - Trombidium family
Wedderburn, NSW, 2 May 2023
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So I have a little Trombidium mite in a teeny tiny terrarium that I raised from a pupa (after finding him pupating in a container I put a firefly in) for scientific purposes. I highkey have just left him in the little terrarium for several months now, and he routinely just Disappears and I don't see him for a few weeks at a time. Well he disappeared like three months back, and I kinda forgot about him until like last week, when I used a stick to prod through the dirt to try and find him. I did not succeed. I resigned myself to waiting for the freshly misted dirt to dry before digging out his corpse to send to an acarologist friend, and then put that off too.
So anyways, I just got home today, and bro was just out crawling around on a leaf.
Remind me not to underestimate him again.
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(R): Red, pillowy aftermaths of Rain
Explore here, how little red, pillowy magical creatures came to metaphorise rain in deserts!
It has been raining on-off since a few weeks now, and making full use of it, I have been going on long, long treks in the smooth rhyolite-rock hills around my house.
*If you can get past the scientific jargon, it is always worthwhile to look into the geological history of the area you live in. It is wildly exhilarating to imagine that the place I live in was once a hellish-landscape of glowing…
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THERES A VELVET MITE ON MY COMPUTER RUNNING SO FAST THAT I CANT SEE ITS LEGS MOVING IT LOOKS LIKE ITS JUST MOVING ACROSS MY LAPTOP LIKE A VERY FAST ROOMBA
ITS FPS IS TOO HIGH FOR MY BRAIN ???!!!!!!!,,,
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SHUT UP ABOUT GEN Z VS MILLENNIAL VS BOOMER AND START TALKING ABOUT RED VELVET MITES BUILDING LOVE NESTS OUT OF STICKS AND BRANCHES AS A PART OF THEIR COURTSHIP RITUAL
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Red Velvet Mites are so stylish. Dare I say swagful.
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Have you ever kept/do you ever plan to keep red velvet mites? I saw an article about kids in India keeping them. Cute fluffy bugs, but apparently they need live prey?
velvet mites can probably be kept as pets if caught as adult and if you have access to a supply of their often quite specific prey. some seem to only eat alate termites and others only springtail eggs, but yes, you are correct that velvet mites are predatory at certain life stages and need live prey.
however, complicating things further, velvet mites have an utterly bizarre life cycle: egg, pre-larva, larva, protonymph, deutonymph, tritonymph to adult. the larva is a fluid-sucking parasite of other arthropods, and deutonymphs and adults are predatory (other stages do not feed).
so to maintain them in captivity, you’d need to maintain colonies of very specific host species, very specific prey, and that’s assuming we can even recreate the conditions host, prey, and mite like to live in (some are arid species, others more temperate and humid)!
so maybe if you live in a place with them you could find a few and keep them captive for a while until they died, but out of sheer complication I’d say they’d be one of the worst things to try and captive breed.
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