Sunday, May 8, 2011

Wildlife Photo: Longhorn Beetle (Anoplophra glabripennis)

Today's wildlife photo was taken by Guest Photographer Rusty Robertson, the dude from Texas.

He shot this Asian Longhorn Beetle (Anoplophra glabripennis) at night on the roof of a house in Kin Village Okinawa, Japan.

They have Longhorn cattle back where he comes from so, I thought it'd be nice to feature his bug shot here.

Showing him how I research critters before I post them was a good idea, too.  It's always best to have the common name and the scientific name when you post a critter's photo online. 

We both learned a lot about this bug today.  It's not some endangered species. It's a hardwood-eating pest.

It could wipe out forests and fruit trees according to THE AUSTRALIAN GOVERNMENT.

That didn't scare us.  We usually aren't scared of bugs.

But, we decided, a bug that has a name like GLABRIPENNIS, we ain't messing around with, anymore. 

Girls will have to go shoot them bugs from now on. 

Menfolk have more important stuff to do, like chase Longhorn Cattle !





2 comments:

Korsós Zoltán said...

Sorry Mike, bit you are (are you?) completely misled by this beetle's name. "Glabripennis" is nothing to do with "pennis (as you thought?), it is from the Latin word "penna" meaning feather or wing. It is either referring to the beetle's body which is covered with smooth (glabrous) hairs (or "feathers"), or to the transparent underwings (which can only be visible when the beetle opens the hard covering wings, so really wants to fly), to the underwings which are smooth, hairless. Sorry about that, to disappoint the girls.

RyukyuMike said...

Korsos Zoltan,
Entertained and educated, maybe a few readers left here wanting more. I just try to serve-up the science on the light side. It helps some of the non-entomologists in the crowd remember if they run across one of these critters in the field and don't happen to have access to a latin dictionary.
Laugh and learn, I guess you could call it, the modus operandi that I try to use. It doesn't really matter if readers laugh at me or with me as long as they've learned something.
Plenty of effort goes into the research behind the scenes in the photos I post here and I try to throw in a twist of humor and a link for those who wish to pursue any subject further, on the more serious side.
My estimate of the people who come here looking for hardcore Latin or bug reproductive systems is that it's somewhere around zero percent. So, I really doubt any of the girl were disappointed.
There'a a tag, HUMOR, I place at the bottom of any post that might confuse people into thinking I've been misled by a bug. But, I'm sure most of my followers get it.
They have a special deal going on with the Blogger thing, right now.

You can start up your own Blog, absolutely FREE. Write serious science blog posts and tag them with stuff like, Science, Latin, Serious, Hardcore, or anything you desire. Let me know when you're all set up and I'll send some folks your way.
Or, if you lighten up a bit, we could just chat here.