Monday, December 28, 2009

Insect visitors

I live on the 23th floor, and yet, there's a myriad of insect visitors to my humble abode.
Above is a dragonfly zipping around the kitchen and got the whole family in excitement while trying to catch it. It was hard to identify the exact species of dragonfly due the the opaqueness of the plastic bag in which the it was trapped.
Dragonflies belong to the order Odonata, which also contains Damselflies. Interestingly, Odonata came from the Greek word "Odonto-" which means tooth, in relation to the strong teeth found on the mandibles of most adults. For more information on this order, refer to here.
This cricket flew to my room and reappeared in the hall
A weird yet interesting looking fly-like insect landing on my notes. haha
The body of a wasp, i think my dad found it in the balcony
Toilet Moth Fly (Psychodidae), a common insect found in the toilet, hence the name
There was a day when it was the termite mating season and all the termites came buzzing into my flat, attacking all available lights. That above was the one at the balcony.
The next day most of the termites died, above is the bodies of the termite alates. Most of us mistake the winged insects for flying ants, my dad couldn't believe it when i told him they were actually termites. Click here for the differences between ant and termite.
This weird looking ant-like insect had a pair of pincers in front, that opened up wide when it felt threatened. It was so funny; the sadistic me 'bullied' it for awhile just to see how it opened and closed up its pincers. A shot-glass gift from my friend's birthday party is proving to by handy in catching insects which landed on my table, haha!
Can anyone tell me the species of this insect?
Probably a flying ant, that was rather big in size (in my opinion), crawling over my Microbio notes. By the looks of this picture, this insect probably disapproves of Koch's Postulates, hahaha
This cute little bug is pretty common; its really tiny and likes to 'hop' around
In flight...
I have no idea what insect is this, it's probably a bug. It seemed to have some trouble in moving around, and was just crawling frantically in circles o.O I forgot what i did to it =x
This pretty looking insect landed one night, hid behind piles of notes, and died the next day on my table =(
Possibly a stink bug, this insect gave me some pretty nice poses for my camera, as well as a well-deserved break from my studies =P

Don't worry, i have a policy at home which is to catch the insects and release it outside instead of killing them, so the insects were either released or left alone in my room. I don't blame my Mum for calling me crazy. hahaha