Toxodera

Toxodera are mimics of the living and the dead!

Trilobite Beetle

Image: budak

Trilobite Beetles are beetles of eternal youth! Or is it eternal age? After all, it's a beetle that never quite grows up but at the same looks a lot like a 250 million-year-old trilobite.

I guess you just can't keep a good arthropod down.

The Blues VII

Image: Cláudio Dias Timm
Porphyrospiza caerulescens

Uh oh! It's that time of year again when all looks lost, all looks cold, all looks... blue. Blue Monday strikes again. The attic groans under the weight of Christmas decorations already laden with a thin layer of dust. Christmas gifts have lost their lustre and joined the rest of your belongings as mere possessions cluttering your life. And if you don't follow through with your New Year's resolutions this time, you'll have to get a new Christmas jumper to ease over that ever-expanding belly.

But worry not! Or continue worrying, just be sure to do it with friends. Friends like the Blue Finch.

Wild Olive Tortoise Beetle

Image: Andreas Kay
Physonota alutacea

I love it when insects go all prehistoric!

Iridescent Bark Mantis

Image: Frupus
Metallyticus splendidus

Iridescent Bark Mantis?

Or a cockroach dressed up for disco night?

Seventh Seal of the Hallowe'en Horrors

It's Halloween! That time of year when we eat humble pie with death, eat a whole bottle of bitter pills with darkness and eat lead with evil. Woo!

Sandgroper

Think grasshopper. Grass. Hopper.

Surely, anything called a Sandgroper is the complete opposite of anything that hops about in the grass? Just look at this thing! It looks like a termite mixed with a beetle grub! And if you find yourself thinking that it looks like a Mole Cricket with all the edges rubbed off, then you're not alone. A lot of people used to think that, they just turned out to be wrong, is all.

Mole Cricket

Image: Mark Yokoyama

You know how you shouldn't make a mountain out of a molehill?

Well, this might be your best opportunity to make a bonsai mountain that's even smaller than the average molehill! Just don't make a big mountain out of your little mountain.

Roughty-tufty Legs

Image: Aleksey Gnilenkov

Exoskeletons are pretty great; it's one of my favourite things about insects. Who can say no to your own custom-made suit of armour, precisely moulded to every contour of your body and available in a wide range of exciting colours to suit every taste?

Australian Hornet

Image: James Niland
Abispa ephippium

I get that wasps use bright colours to warn predators of their painful sting. It's a great way to ward off attacks without having to physically do anything, and everyone loves not having to physically do anything...

But surely this is just showing off?

The Blues VI

Image: Bernard DUPONT
Corythaeola cristata

It's Blue Monday! Mathematically proven to be the most depressing day of the year by qualified PR professionals who believe the best way to defeat it is with a holiday package bought from their clients. But there's no defeating it. It looms. It impends. It soon comes to a dark night of the soul near YOU! And there are no holidays from one's own soul.

Stick Grasshopper

Image: Andreas Kay

What do you get when you mix a grasshopper with a stick insect?

And the Number of the Hallowe'en Horrors is 666

Its Halloween! That time of year when we draw black waters from the well of cosmic truth with death, draw deep breaths of chill, grave-leaden mist with darkness, and draw white, chalk outlines around corpses in the alleyway with evil. Woo!

Behold Death. He's wearing his Loch Ness Monster costume this year. Basically it's a dark green robe, a dark green handle for his scythe and a kind of lizard mask on the blade. It looks great and boy is he committed to the role. We've been trying to get him out of the swimming pool for hours!

Here be Darkness. She's been trying to teach the zombies about the miraculous power of make-up. I don't think it's going too well. Lipstick is supposed to stick to lips, not the other way round. There's bits of face everywhere!

Yonder is Evil. He's dressed up in a long, white robe with a little cardboard halo fixed onto his head with a piece of wire. He does that every year but it's hilarious every time!

Webspinner

Image: Mike Quinn

Spiderman. He just doesn't make sense!

It's not the whole 'bitten by a radioactive spider and now he's a bit like a spider' thing. That's fine. That's great. That makes perfect sense. Well known fact, that is. The problem is the 'now he's a bit like a spider'.

Thread-legged Bug

Image: Carlos De Soto Molinari

It's the 21st century and such things as agriculture, antibiotics and the ever-increasing speed of bad news have conspired to ensure that there are more humans alive today than ever before.

And you know what that means...

Microdon

Image: N Sloth

It sounds like a dinosaur but it looks like a... slug?

Rat-tailed Maggot

Image: Biopix: N Sloth

Goodness me! Whatever next? Louse-headed mouse? Flea-legged parking inspector? Cockroach-winged PR guru?

Cave Cricket

Image: Gilles San Martin

What would you bring with you on an expedition into a cave system? Food? Water? A torch? A friend to talk to so you aren't driven mad by the eternal echo of solitude?

No. You need legs. Long, long legs. Legs on stilts.

Lessons of Life & Death. From Grasshoppers.

Image: Ashahar alias Krishna Khan

Because who better to teach such weighty matters than a crazy-eyed grasshopper?

The Blues V

Image: Hiyashi Haka
Lamprotornis caudatus

It's time for the blues! Either that or I'm a week late... Oh dear. Failure upon failure! Blues upon blues! Well, I guess it makes sense, really. Blues are eternal, after all. Haven't you heard? It's blues all the way down! At least on this page...