View allAll Photos Tagged Behaviour
Impressions of Gatwick :)
OK I am pushing the boundaries of reasonable behaviour now in uploading this to the world, but it's a good example of the lengths we enthusiasts used to take to see and record unusual aircraft! I had finished a long day's spotting at Gatwick - it was dark - it was cold - but I wanted to go down from the viewing area and get a better look at this Bavaria Germanair BAC 1-11 - my first and last I think at Gatwick, as they weren't scheduled. So I pressed my 35mm camera through the fence and took a long exposure - hoping for the best - of a slowly moving aircraft - it was probably windy too - and here is the crazy result :)
D-AMUC c/n 227 BAC 1-11-528FL was delivered new to Bavaria in 1970, and flew with the airline until the merger with Germanair in 1977. The aircraft was repainted again a couple of years later when Bavaria Germanair was merged into Hapag-Lloyd. Soon after, the BAC 1-11s began to be sold off by Hapag-Lloyd as non-standard for their fleet, and D-ANUE went to Austral Lineas Aereas as LV-OAY, flying with the airline until 1993 before withdrawal and scrapping.
Bavaria Germanair was an airline that came into being following the merger of Bavaria Fluggesellschaft and Germanair on 1 January 1977. The airline's main area of activity was operating charter flights from German airports to European holiday destinations. The airline ceased to operate and lost its separate identity when it was merged into Hapag-Lloyd Flug on 1 January 1979. [Wiki]
This photo is one of a small number of slides taken by me in 1977-78, before I purchased my first SLR camera - a Zenith E. I only switched fully over from the old Instamatic in 1978!
Slides that were nearly lost to oblivion No.62 The original slide / transparency was rescued from a box of 'dud' slides that I could never quite bring myself to throw away - now I am glad that I kept them ;) From an original slide, scanned and unrestored.
You can see a random selection of my aviation memories here: www.flickriver.com/photos/heathrowjunkie/random/
Most Western tourism theorists agree that tourism is about seeing. People go to places to gaze (Urry, 2002) at images (Boorstin). Even the most semiotic of analyses (MacCannell, Culler) has (Western) tourists go to sites where they apply "markers" (guidebooks, signs, labels) to sights. Very occasionally MacCannell notes, such in the case of a piece of moonrock, the labels maybe of more interest than the sights themselves.
The Japanese have been going to see markers since time immemorial. The author of Japan most famous travellogue - The Narrow Road to the Deep North - went to see "Ruins of Identity" (Hudson) Matsuo Basho, places were once great things happened but where now there is no trace even of ruins, only the markers (such as a commemorative stone) remains. Basho wrote a poem and wept. This trope is continued in other Japanese travellogues, and tourism behaviour, which is often described as being "nostalgic".
This "nostalgia" is sometimes thought to be a reaction to Westernisation, but it has clearly been going on for a lot longer. The Japanese have been waxing lyrical about ruins, since the beginning of recorded time. This practice originates in Shinto. Shinto shrines and visiting them - the central praxis of the Shinto religion - are themselves ruins, markers to events that, supposedly, took place in the time of the gods.
The first Tourist attraction that Matsuo Basho visitied Muro no Yashima, is a shrine to the a god that gave birth to one of the (divine) emperial ancestors in a doorless room (Muro) which was on fire. It has since been traditional to use the word "smoke" (kemuri) in poems about that location.
The Japanese worship markers. In Japan the sign has fully present and evident corporeality.
I thought at first that the Japanese were going to names to provide the sights, the images. In these days of television, sight is as portable as information. While (as described below) Westerners are inclinded to believe in the spooky immateriality of the sign (used as they are to talking to themselves in the "silence" of their minds) so the thought of travelling to a sign is probably not very attractive. Signs are everywhere and no-where. Signs are within. We travel to see "it" that thing out there "with our own eyes".
But for the Japanese signs have to be transported. The first of these, the Mirror of the sungodess was transported from heaven, to be the marker of the most important deity. The imperial ancestors then distributed mirrors to the regional rulers and some of these were enshrined. Subsequently Japanese gods have been be stamping their namess on pieces of paper and being transported all around the country to be enshrined far and wide.
The Japanese do not travel for sights but for markers and since markers are portable, then one might think that it would be the Japanese that might stay at home. Why don't they set up a marker saying Paris and visit it instead? This is indeed what they do. As Hendry points out, throughout Japan there are markers to places abroad, Spanish towns, shakespeare's birthplace "more authentic than the original!" (Hendry's exclamation mark). If the marker has been transported, and the sights have been provided, then the Japanese are happy to visit that transported marker instead, or in preference to the original. "Foriegn villages" (gaikoku mura) have a tremendous history streatching back as far as their have been shrines but more recently, again, the first tourist attraction that Matsuo Basho visited, as well as being associated with the actions of the gods, was also "the shrine of seven islands." In the grounds of the Muro no Yashiam (Room of Seven Islands) shrine there are miniature version of eight other shrines all around the country (in those days abroad). In other words, Basho's first destination of call was a "foriegn village." Likewise as Vaporis elucidates the most popular site in the Tourism City which was Edo (the place which all feudal lords had to travell to, the place with the most famous sites and still today the most visited place in Japan: Tokto) was Rakan-ji a temple in which all of the 88 buddha statues of a famous pilgrimage were collected to gether. As if going to an international village, by going to that one temple, the Japanese were able to feel that they had completed a pilgrimage in the afternoon. The 88 stop pilgrimage has itself been copied into many smaller, piligrimages all around Japan, sometimes at a single temple, including at my village of Aio Futajima. In sort of nested copying, the copied 88 sites of the larger pilgrimage are themselves copied to one of the temples where again, one can complete the pilgrimage at one visit.
The Japanese are also fond of post-tourism via the use of guildebooks and maps, which are like super-minature "foreign villages."
Taking a deconstructive turn, I associate the Western practice of going to see sights, such as Frenchyness and proclaiming them Frenchy, with the ongoing efforts of Western philosophers to promote dualism (Derrida). Derrida argues that the dualisms for mind and body, or thinking matter and extendend matter, locutionary and illoluctionary acts, speech and writing, etc, are all designed to purify the habit of listening to oneself speak, to frame this habit as thinking. As other deconstructive criticism has argued, the creation of dualities does not only take place at the Philosophers' desk but also in pictorial art, literature, mythology (Brenkman) and society. If the philosophers are interesting it is because they give us clues of to the tactics by which dualities can be preserved. One of the most recent such tactics is that provided by Jackson in his papers regarding Mary in a black and white room.
Mary grows up in a black and white room. She sees the world through black and white monitors. She knows everything there is to know, physically, about the world except she has never seen colour. When she leaves here room and sees some red flowers, she is (we are persuaded) surprised. "Wow, so that is what red is." This demonstrates to somethat there is something non-physical about the world. Even if one has all the data, all the information, all the language about the world, there is something about the sights, the seeing, the images, that makes us go wow, and proves that the world is not only physical. This thought experiment persuades some of duality.
Tourists are all Mary. They go in search of Frenchiness and in a mass trancendental meditation, they see Frenchiness, the niagra falls, and are assued that there there is a world out there, and a private world in here.
But what of the Japanese? The seem to be going to see the marker, the sign saying "This is red." I had thought perhaps they they then provide the sight from their imagination to go with it. I.e. we go to sights to mark them, Japanese go to markers to site them. But this is not entirely the case. Yes, there is some "image provision" going on on the part of the tourists. Someone intending to visit the site of the famous duel between Miyamto Musashi and XYZ in the straits of Kanmon -another completely empty ruin of a tourist attraction - said that the the place brought up many images (omoi wo haseru). Someone taking a super miniature foreign village style-tour aroud a map of Edo said that just looking at the map brought back "the mental image of the Edo capital" (omokage wo shinobaseta).
But that is not what is going on in Japanese tourism as I found out this weekend. Before writing about Japanese tourism I thought it would be a good idea to do some, so I visited some of the J-Tourism style ruins in my local village and was powerfully impressed.
In the local town there is a ruin of an ancient governmental site from about 1200 years ago. All that remains is a field and some commemorative stones. There are benches lined up beneath the trees at one side of the site, in front of the empty field with some "markers" explaining what used to be in the field. Imaging the tourists rathe than the ancient town hall, I could not but laugh out loud.
In my village of Aio, there are ten tourist attractions, two of which are empty. One is to the early twentieth century European style Japanese painter Kobayashi Wasaku. There is a bust. Two commerotive stones and an empty area of tarmac. And finally and most movingly, close to our beach house, on the road on the way there is the site of the birthplace of one of the Choushu Five, Yamao Youzou a young revolutionary, who was sent to study in my hometown, London, towards the end of the nineteenth century. He studied engineering in London and Scotland and came back to Japan to lead the Westernization of its technology education, founding what is now the engineering department of the University of Tokyo. At the site of his birth place there is a large black stone upon which there is a poem.
There is a poem which goes something like
At the end of a long journey
Which is the heart
Is Japan
はるかなる心のすえはやまとなる
Nothing beside remains. Laughing at myself all the while, I had a Matsuo Basho momement and cried. It was not that I imagined the figure of Mr. Yamao but, as was suggested to the readers of a modern guide to Basho's work, he travelled all over Japan to the sites visited by the ancient so as too "commute with their hearts" (kokoro wo kayowaseru) and that we by visiting the same sites, or just reading the guide book can do the same through the filter of Basho. By the same logic, can you feel my heart in the above photo?
The attraction of the small hillock next to a stone surrounded by bamboo it was not the sights, or the marker, nor the tourists gaze (my gaze), but the gaze of Mr. Yamao who had also stood there well before setting off to London, and back to change the world. I felt I saw the world through Mr. Yamao's eyes.
Had I imagined things, then I might have attempted to keep up the dualism between name and vision. On the contrary however this desination seemed to have been designed to make me feel the gaze of another, together. I will have to use Kitayama Osamu's gazing together theory too.
Gesture, attitude, behaviour : a workshop with dancers Mauro Paccagnella and Alessandro Bernardeschi on march 6, 2007 at Erg (Ecole de Recherche Graphique, Brussels) for bachelor 1 students. Professors : Sabine Voglaire and Marc Wathieu. Pictures by Yves André.
Manta behaviour is fun to observe. Sometimes they form a train to do loop de loops, and then other days they play chicken where they swim towards each other and swerve at the last minute to avoid impact.
A selection from the banquet... The different behaviours were absolutely brilliant to watch and absolutely nothing went to waste...
Catherine the Great created the Small Hermitage in order to escape the rigid court protocol of the Winter Palace. She wrote rules of behaviour for her Hermitage guests, which were displayed in the gallery connecting the Winter Palace to the Small Hermitage. Breaking the rules meant a culprit had to drink a glass of cold water, recite lines from a poem or learn a verse by heart. The original rules, left, are displayed in the exhibition, and this handy translation on the right is printed on a tea towel you can buy in the Exhibition shop.
The rules read:
1. All RANKS shall be left behind at the doors, similarly HATS and particularly SWORDS.
2. Orders of PRECEDENCE and HAUGHTINESS, and anything of such like which might result from them, shall be left at the DOORS.
3. Be MERRY, but neither SPOIL nor BREAK anything, nor indeed GNAW at anything.
4. Be SEATED, STAND or WALK as it best pleases you, regardless of others.
5. Speak with MODERATION and not too loudly, so that others have not an EARACHE or HEADACHE.
6. Argue without ANGER or PASSION.
7. Do not SIGH or YAWN, neither BORE nor FATIGUE others.
8. Agree to PARTAKE of any INNOCENT ENTERTAINMENT suggested by others.
9. Eat well of good things, DRINK in MODERATION so that each should be able always to find his LEGS on leaving these DOORS.
10. All DISPUTES must stay behind closed doors; and what goes in one EAR should go out the other before departing through the DOORS.
This baby seal (Phoca vitulina) rubbed itself vigorously in kelp.
Dieser Baby-Seehund (Phoca vitulina) rieb sich lange in Tang.
Sand tailed digger wasp (Cerceris arenaria) with paralysed weevil prey at nest burrow entrance. Dorset, UK.
The male buffalo beetle in this video attempts to grasp the female but is rebuffed.
Video by Laura Heslin Piper
Now, which is more strange? Is it the good folk of Blaenau Ffestiniog, who have developed the weird custom of chucking lumps of slate on every hill that they can find surrounding the town? Or is it the fact that 30 miles up the A470 in Llandudno, B+Q are doing a roaring trade, selling the stuff at 10 quid a bag? Either way, it all seems a bit mad to me...
On the last yards of it's journey south, the Premier set passes through the platform of the closed Blaenau Ffestiniog North station, with a typical Blaenau backdrop.
North station closed in 1982 when the current joint Network Rail/Ffestiniog Railway station came into use, the 1950's station building slipped into dereliction yet survived as long as 2012, and the platform lighting is still in place!
28 September 2013
Hurled out of a passing chariot by wicked dogs, damn their eyes!!! We disposed of it in a nearby rubbish bin. In some countries they could be [if they were caught] heavily fined and had their miserable gurt great fat chariot summarily crushed.
A short-tailed, plump bird with a low, whirring flight. When perched on a rock it habitually bobs up and down and frequently cocks its tail. Its white throat and breast contrasts with its dark body plumage. It is remarkable in its method of walking into and under water in search of food.
Welcome,
this item is gaining an unexpected number of consultations in the last days without any comment.
I am curious to know who is intersted in this topic.
This bin doesn't just advertise and allow for recycling; it is recycling!
Chapultepec Park, Mexico City.
Album Title: Exotic Behaviour
Model: 虹羚
Photographer: Edwin Setiawan
Place: 士林官邸
Date: 2009/07/12
Just about Photography: edwinsetiawan.wordpress.com
Edwin Setiawan Photography: www.edwinsetiawan.com
Shot with Browning Recon Force trail-cam © Craig Lindsay 2020. All rights reserved.
I wouldn't normally bother posting pigeons, but with this bit behaviour I thought it was worth an upload.
Got a week off work coming up so hope to get out with the main camera at least a little bit.
I think this is a Warbler, possibly an Audubon Warbler, getting at food on the underside of this rock formation.
My Mental Notes card deck finally arrived — a 52 cards with insights into human behaviour, to bring a little psychology into webdesign.
We are trying to teach Lucas to drink from his cup without banging it on the table. Here is one of the behaviour adjusting sessions.
Album Title: Exotic Behaviour
Model: 虹羚
Photographer: Edwin Setiawan
Place: 士林官邸
Date: 2009/07/12
Just about Photography: edwinsetiawan.wordpress.com
Edwin Setiawan Photography: www.edwinsetiawan.com
Tracklist:
A1 Nuclear Burn 6:23
A2 Euthanasia Waltz 5:42
A3 Born Ugly 8:14
B1 Smacks Of Euphoric Hysteria 4:30
B2 Unorthodox Behaviour 8:29
B3 Running On Three 4:38
B4 Touch Wood 3:04
The boat gently leans into a turn, rather like a motor cycle - except in this case it is automatic. The mechanism is not widely agreed, but I strongly believe that when the boat turns at speed, the side of the boat on the inner side of the turn is subject to low pressure underwater. This gently pulls the boat downwards on that side, causing it to lean into the turn. The behaviour is beneficial, because it helps to prevent people being thrown overboard on sharp turns. Incidentally, as predicted, the boat still leans into the turn with the mast up, overcoming the centrifugal force from the mast.
This is a unique behaviour of this species I observed after a long time, for which I had no idea before! It seemed to me like a kind of mating rituals. I waste not my time to record this event. I remained scared lest they get disturbed, and thereby I knew that I was breaking some basic ethics of a nature lover. The whole event went for 20 minutes or so, and I recorded only a fraction of this whole event.
My sweet water aquariums are always my wonderful windows to underwater nature. These are of my amazing micro-nature study and I spend hours and hours to experience and document fascinating behaviour of fishes and other creatures, plants, and even macroscopic members of a micro ecosystem under various conditions. Sometimes I study activities of minute creatures at night under low light conditions when all the fishes sleep. My hobby educates me every single moment I observe so close to them. I enjoy beauties of life everyday from so close, and they are my immense source of energies to stay happy.
These schoolgirls were straight out to Shibuya to hang out after school (?) in the early afternoon...
This was a weekday, but I am told that often school-age kids will hang around in their uniforms on weekends, sometimes because they have a sports match or other school activity on that day, but also (and this certainly converse to behaviour in Europe) because, with a few adjustments (adding the long white "Fame"-style dance leg warmer socks, rolling up their skirts at the waist - standard issue is at least knee length - and styling their hair) they can look cool, fresh and young, playfully advertising their age and style to other eligible schoolkids... Namely the boys in their traditional uniforms with punky hair and the shirts hanging out, though they do attract a little too much attention from (respectable?) 'salarymen' in suits. Then again, they are hard to miss in a sea of suits.
There are other, somewhat fruitier forms of fashion known as 'Ganguro' and 'Garu' which I will try to explain to you later.
The milky stork (Mycteria cinerea) is a medium, almost completely white plumaged stork species found predominantly in coastal mangroves in parts of Southeast Asia.
The milky stork was formerly placed in the Ibis genus, with the binomial name Ibis cinereus, but is now categorised as belonging to Mycteria due to large similarities in appearance and behaviour to the three other storks in this genus (the wood stork, yellow-billed stork and painted stork). Phylogenetic studies based on DNA hybridization and cytochrome oxidase b have demonstrated that the milky stork shares a clade with other Mycteria, and forms a sister pair of species with the painted stork.
Adult:
This medium stork stands 91–97 cm tall, making it slightly smaller than the closely related painted stork. The adult plumage is completely white except for black flight feathers of the wing and tail, which also have a greenish gloss. Wing length measures 435–500 mm and the tail measures 145–170 mm. The extensive white portion of the plumage is completely suffused with a pale creamy yellow during the breeding season, hence the term “milky”. This creamy tint is absent from the plumage during breeding. The wing coverts and back feathers are paler and have an almost white terminal band.
The bare facial skin is greyish or dark maroon; with black, irregular blotches. During breeding, the bare facial skin is deep wine red with black markings on the lores by the bill base and gular region, with a ring of brighter red skin around the eye. Soon after courtship, the facial skin fades to paler orange-red. Breeding birds also show a narrow pinkish band of bare skin along the underside of the wing.
The downcurved bill is dull pinkish yellow and sometimes tipped white. The culmen length measures 194 – 275mm. The legs are a dull red-flesh colour, with the tarsi measuring 188 – 225mm. It has long thick toes that probably serve to increase surface area of its feet and therefore reduce pressure from standing and walking on the soft mud of its foraging area, so that the bird does not sink considerably when foraging and feeding.
During courtship, the bill turns deep yellow, with a greyish tan on the basal third; and the legs become deep magenta. The sexes are similar, but the average male is slightly larger with a longer, thinner bill.
The adult is readily recognisable in the field by its white head feathers, yellow-orange bill and pink legs. It is distinguished from other waders such as egrets and lesser adjutants by its extensively white body plumage and black wing coverts. However, the milky stork resembles and may therefore be confused with the partly sympatric Asian Openbill and various white egret species. Nevertheless, the egrets are smaller and completely white, and the Asian Openbill is also smaller and distinguished from the milky stork by the grey bill. In the northern part of its range around Vietnam, milky storks occasionally occur in sympatry with the closely related and morphologically similar painted storks. However, the painted stork is distinguished from the milky stork in adult plumage by the former’s black and white breast band and wing coverts, pink inner secondaries, more restricted bare head skin, and generally brighter soft part colouration.
Like other storks, the milky stork habitually soars on thermals to travel between areas. Flocks of up to a dozen birds can be seen soaring on thermals at great heights between 10:00 and 14:00. At breeding colonies and feeding grounds, flight is contagious in that take-off by one bird is quickly followed by others. Average flapping rate has been estimated at 205 beats per minute.
Juvenile:
At hatching, the chicks are covered with white down. Contour feathers begin to appear by 10–14 days, and the chicks become fully feathered with full plumage after 4–6 weeks. This plumage is typically pale greyish brown with a white lower back, rump and tail coverts; some white downy feathers remaining under the wings and underside of the body; black wing and tail feathers with a white and dark brown wing lining; distinct feathering on the greyish brown head, and dull yellow bare parts. After about 10 weeks when juveniles have fledged, loss of head feathers begins; and the dark, bare areas on the forehead and sides of the head around the eyes become visible. These dark bare areas are sometimes interspersed with dull orange spots. Nestlings also have a dark brownish grey bill and skin around the bill and eye.
By the age of three months, the previously feathered head is now completely bald and the dull bill has become warm yellow with a greenish yellow tip. Both features are characteristic of adults. Milky stork juveniles appear almost identical to painted stork juveniles, but are said to be distinguishable from painted stork juveniles by their paler underwing lining contrasting with the completely black flight feathers, whereas this underwing lining is completely black in painted storks.
The milky stork is usually silent during non-breeding. At nests, individuals utter a falsetto “fizz” call during the Up-Down display. The young utter a froglike croak when begging for food.
Especially in captivity in National Zoo of Malaysia, Singapore Zoo and Dusit Zoo, milky storks and painted interbred to produce hybrid offspring. These hybrids apparently vary in appearance through different combinations of milky stork and painted stork phenotypes in varying proportions. Because these hybrid juveniles are not readily distinguishable from pure-bred juveniles based on morphology, molecular methods have been used to detect possible hybrids. Compared to the parent painted stork, the adult hybrid has a pink rather than orange bill and head. Adult hybrids may also have some small black spots on the white wing and a subtle pink tinge on the feathers.
Across all ages in this species, the iris is dark brown; and the legs are pinkish, but appear white due to a covering of the birds’ excreta.
In 2008, the global population was fewer than 2200 individuals, which is a reduction from approximately 5000 in the 1980s. In Malaysia, population counts decreased steadily from over 100 individuals in 1984 to less than 10 by 2005 (by over 90%), so that the population here faces local extinction. Of the current world population estimate, there are probably about 1600 individuals in Sumatra, less than 500 on Java, and less than 100 on the southeast Asian mainland. The Cambodian population is very small, numbering 100–150 individuals; and although it may be relatively stable, rapid declines are expected if serious threats persist. Due to the substantial population declines across its range, the milky stork’s population status was elevated to Endangered from Vulnerable in 2013 by the IUCN.
Y no hay mapa para el comportamiento humano, son terriblemente caprichosos; luego, de repente se transforma en felicidad; pero, oh, nos vemos envueltos en el intercambio de las emociones humanas; cada vez de manera satisfactoria. Y no hay mapa, y una brújula no ayudaría en absoluto...
At Whyalla, i witnessed an amazing behaviour by some juvenile cuttlefish. A group of about five cuttlefish were playing keepings off with a cuttlefish bone. One cuttlefish would grab the bone, and the others would be in hot pursuit trying to get it. If the cuttlefish let it go, the natural bouyancy of the cuttlefish bone would force the bone to the surface, and all the cuttles would chase it to the surface. The winning cuttle would grab it in its tencticles/arms and bring in back down into about 2-3 m of water, where it would release it and the cycle would begin again. It reminded me of watching a squid taking the bait off a fisherman i saw only days earlier, and i believe this play was a lesson to teach young cuttles how to capture prey and feed. The fact that the learning tool is potentially the bone of its predecessors (possibly even its parents) that come here to give birth to them and then die, i find truly amazing.
More photos at:
Umpiring at a Rowing Regatta at Dorney Lake and one of the officials is feeling naughty. Taken on Fuji X-H1 with Fringer adapter and Canon 100-400 L f/4.6-5.4
"To be a revolutionary you have to be a human being.
You have to care about people who have no power."
( Jane Fonda - American actress and political activist, b. in 1937)
Those kids stay at Guria in Varanasi (Benaras) where they are trying to have a normal childhood like any other child in the world.
Guria is a Human Rights organisation fighting against the sexual exploitation of women and children, particularly those forced into prostitution and trafficking.
Manju and her husband Ajeet Singh are running this non-profit organisation at great personal risk, providing shelter and hope to many children and facing many difficulties from all those who would like to use those children as a second generation prostitution.
There are many ways to help and give a kind of support to Guria, this is its website, www.guriaindia.org and you may contact Manju and Ajeet at guriaajeet@rediffmail.com
A special dedication to my friend Charles Trabuchet, a French young man who came to India in order to give some time to Guria and to help those children during several months.
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Please do not use any photographs without permission (even for private use).
The use of any work without consent of the artist is PROHIBITED and will lead automatically to consequence.
The hunt for an urban beast, here found after it has escaped to a local park.
This beast is quite common in urban areas. It is usually found around shopping centres and is known for its bad behaviour.
This bad behaviour can include damaging car in shopping centre car parks and inability to follow directions and a lack of self control.
This and the following photos will represent some of the first, still photos of velvet worm anatomy and feeding behaviour that I have come across over a public forum. There is the awesome documentary life in the undergrowth narrated by David Attenborough put out by the BBC that has some amazing footage of a velvet worm in action. You can see that here: boingboing.net/2011/03/02/death-and-the-velvet.html. Unfortunately my mpe is no longer and so I was reduced to using a raynox msn-202 coupled with a 100mm macro lens. Despite that I was able to get some serviceable pictures.
Nearly six years of searching and I have finally come across a velvet worm! This is was of my awesome finds. Probably rarer than a jaguar, most people I know only ever come across a few in their lifetime. Reclusive, living in low densities they are nocturnal predators with a strongly negative phototactic response. They are usually found in low vegetation though this one was found on a leaf at chest height. These are what those cuddly, fuzzy creatures that morph into blood curdling monsters are based on. They appear as slow, gentle creatures until they begin hunting and then you see the darker, more monstrous side!
They have a slow ponderous movement and their legs move asynchronously. The stubby feet end in what look almost like claws or feet belonging to an animal. They move their antennae back and forth searching for food. When they do locate food they halt, rear up slightly, pause imperceptibly and then their modified front legs which act like miniature canons fire a spray of adhesive that is 90% water which hardens in the air. I touched the adhesive and it is STICKY!!! I pulled up a mosquito lassoed with this glue and ripped the body in half, it is obviously more than adequate for the size of the prey that the velvet worm hunts. They swivel and rotate these 'canons' in a 'Z' or 'S' pattern to increase the surface area to trap their prey. However this motion occurs faster than the eye can see. All I saw was the recoil of the 'canons', I did not see the swiveling motion which is said to occur in .07 seconds! If the prey is large enough it may fire several times. The prey is bound to the surface substrate and the velvet worm approaches...
The velvet worm waits until some of the struggling of the prey has abated and then it moves over the prey. It has an operculum in the ventral surface from which it everts a kind of feeding apparatus that is disproportionately large with the scale of the invertebrate. It possesses two fangs which bite down into the prey and inject proteolytic enzymes and possibly poisons to kill the prey. It then takes up bits of digested prey into its stomach where it is further digested. Complete digestion of the mosquito occurred within roughly 15 minutes.
Velvet worms have remained unchanged for roughly 570 million years (Wikipedia) and uncharacteristically give birth to live young!
Found during a night hike in Reserva Bilsa, Mache-Chindul, Ecuadorian coastal rainforest.