Less than Fun. Netelia testacea, Orange Caterpillar Wasp, Gein, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
I suppose I'm lucky because the last week or so an array of Insects has been alighting on my hands! Today I picked my way through the park and the marshes between the Gaasp and 'Het Gein', two small rivers on the outskirts of Amsterdam. I don't know what the derivation is of the word 'Gein' as in the name for this small river; but 'gein' is a relatively colloquial word in Dutch to denote a joke or the having of fun.
As I walked in the new suburb Gein (first established in the early 1980s), Wasp Netelia decided my fingers were hospitable. But no, they are not Moth Caterpillars! That's what Netelia, an Ichneumon Wasp, was after, of course. She deposits her eggs in the living caterpillars, which are then eaten from inside out while still alive. Pretty gruesome and less than fun, I imagine (although I have no idea whether Caterpillars feel pain). The great Charles Darwin was so turned off by this phenomenon that he wrote his American friend, the famous botanist Asa Gray, in 1860, that this was the reason he could not believe in a Benevolent God.
As for the name Netelia; I assume it's derived from a post-classical Latin word: netus, which means something like 'thread' or 'string'; presumably to denote the threadlike, 'thin' appearance of these Ichneumon Wasps.
Less than Fun. Netelia testacea, Orange Caterpillar Wasp, Gein, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
I suppose I'm lucky because the last week or so an array of Insects has been alighting on my hands! Today I picked my way through the park and the marshes between the Gaasp and 'Het Gein', two small rivers on the outskirts of Amsterdam. I don't know what the derivation is of the word 'Gein' as in the name for this small river; but 'gein' is a relatively colloquial word in Dutch to denote a joke or the having of fun.
As I walked in the new suburb Gein (first established in the early 1980s), Wasp Netelia decided my fingers were hospitable. But no, they are not Moth Caterpillars! That's what Netelia, an Ichneumon Wasp, was after, of course. She deposits her eggs in the living caterpillars, which are then eaten from inside out while still alive. Pretty gruesome and less than fun, I imagine (although I have no idea whether Caterpillars feel pain). The great Charles Darwin was so turned off by this phenomenon that he wrote his American friend, the famous botanist Asa Gray, in 1860, that this was the reason he could not believe in a Benevolent God.
As for the name Netelia; I assume it's derived from a post-classical Latin word: netus, which means something like 'thread' or 'string'; presumably to denote the threadlike, 'thin' appearance of these Ichneumon Wasps.