Look at those eyes!

  

Oxygen Generator Consumers

You might be thinking why these animals are also posted here, they are not Oxygen Generators! Yes they are not, they should not be here! But we have a few native goats in our property, so i guess there should be some correlation with them to be included. They are Oxygen Generator consumers, because they love grass, so will that suffice?  But do you know that goats are not like sheep that love grazing on grasses! I guess you could say that goats are more discriminating.  When given grasses or plant feeds in their shed, they only want to eat those put slightly above their heads. I wonder too why they love to stretch their neck fully when eating. The farther the feed to get, the more they prefer that feed. It actually has long been an amusement for me, and till now i don't know the reason! 

When cut grasses are put on the ground before giving them to the goats, they wont eat that, wont matter even if they are hungry! If a goat has already eaten a live grass on the prairie, another one will not eat the leftover. The second one will choose a patch not touched by another. If you don't call that discriminating, i don't know what is!

 I wonder too why they look so sad even if they are not hungry!

These are native goats, so smaller than the hybrids. But they are more resistant to environmental conditions and diseases as well. Moreover, they can live on natural grasses and weeds unlike the hybrids that must be fed with commercially prepared feeds.

I really wonder why goats always look so sad! Anybody guess?

My Web Searches

My web searches last weekend turned out very productive. I started the day with early breakfast. The morning temperatures these days are more comfortable than any parts of the year, so I have a grand time. I just went to the hedges, under the fruit trees, and even under the ornamental plants.

While you are searching the computer web, I was searching the spider webs! Here, I will try to show you some different web configurations, and how the occupants of the webs manage their stay. I tell you they are very interesting. I assure you no animal was hurt in the process and no "home" was destroyed.

 The above is the biggest spider commonly found in our property, the widest webs, and the most sticky. Adults can have >1 meter web diameter. They are also the most scary, at least to me! This is of the Nephila species. We have the bluish and the reddish species.

 The above is lovely in red, small body ~1.5cm long, with hairy legs. Its web doesn't look like a regular spider web, but just a few strands where it can cling on in space.

 This is a jumping spider, has a regular web configuration, but the quality of its weave is not very well planned and not proportionately distributed. Look at the above spaces between the strands, they are very irregular. I guess this is not a quality conscious homemaker!

 How about the above? The strands are so thickly placed, so conscientiously woven with almost equal distances. I can imagine it took a long time before the web is finished. The occupant is just ~1cm in body length except the legs. The web is only about 2 ft in diameter.

 This looks like a crab spider. It positions itself with the two pointed horns upwards as if it is the head. However, the head is actually below the body, only posing the horns as threats to predators, i guess! In contrast with the previous web, this one leaves a small area at the center without the concentric strands. I thought somehow that maybe it is still not finished, but i waited for 3 days, and it remained like that. Maybe that is just his style.

 This is the only spider i saw with a web patterned from the solar system.  And the strands and weave are so delicately spaced as if following real dimensions. I just am surprised why there is a need for that diagonal strand crossing the circular orbit, maybe it has a certain function. I am thinking of studying again, this time it will be Arachnidology, is it the study of spiders? I just conned it now!

 This is another shot of another Nephila web, we have a lot of them under the mango and coconut trees.

 This is also just ~1 cm in body length. I cannot get a good shot as the web always sway with slight wind. Its web is also built so differently from the rest of them. It is made of long strands connected to the vegetation around it, but the concentric circles are only made at the area near the center, where the owner dwell most of the time. I wish i can show a clear distinct picture of its back, as it seems there is a cross mark there. Maybe in their kingdom, the mark for poison is also an X, so that is his mark to scare predators. Until now, i still don't know what kind of animals prey on spiders!

And this is the most spectacular web i saw in their spider kingdom. There is no pattern at all.  This is totally the exact example of organized chaos, or probably chaotic disorder! I wonder how the owner is able to get in and out of this dwelling. It somehow tells the predators that nobody is using that space, so will not bother the occupant. I actually touched the owner because i am not sure if it is dead or alive. It ran fast, so I realized this is really his real design. Maybe he is the artist among them, and his style is abstract!

Elegant Insect Skirts

This thing mesmerize me! These organisms wear white skirts, flamboyantly swaying with the wind, very elegant. They are in groups at the underside of a gourd leaf, or sometimes on the stem. It is a bit disconcerting, but attractive to me. There are feathery parts arising on them. I searched using feathery insects or cottony insect larvae, but can't find the same. I used other descriptions using white to describe the very obvious characteristics, but led to nowhere too. There are some whiteflies, coccinelid larvae, lacewing larvae, i searched for life cycles, but to no avail. I hope this will come in contact with an entomologist who will lead me to its descriptions and or importance.

 These are some groups of this insect at the underside of a luffa or gourd. You can't really see what they are, as if they are just feathery remnants of something. I am actually hoping that these are either coccinelids or lacewing larvae, predators of mealybugs and scale insects. But that is just my hope.

 Close observations showed that one individual has a lot of those feathers arising from its body except the thorax and head. Normal conditions will not allow you to see their bodies. I blow some air to them, and the individual insects showed up. The feathers even detach from the body if I blow harder. Sometimes the insects are blown away too!

 Look at the photo above and below, showing the insect head, thorax and legs. It is completely white.

 The above insect remains, shed off the skirt when i strongly blow it, the feathers completely went off. Most of the feathers are attached to its behind, now looking fragile and helpless, i wonder if they will die when their skirt is gone!

This moth is always near them, associate with them. I blew it off, but after a few minutes the moth returned to the brood. It is really perplexing, now I am inclined to think that these might be some moth larvae undergoing some unusual instar shifts. Or probably the moth is getting some benefits from the remnants of the larvae. I have asked some entomologists via Facebook, but they seem not to be frequenting their sites. My patience is wearing thin. I cannot wait.

Hurray, i posted the photos in a Malaysian Gardening forum, and someone posted the same photos, calling it leafhoppers. I searched and yes, they are leafhoppers, therefore unwanted by crops and not predators of mealybugs. Now i can give instructions to my sister in the province to torch them to death. It will like an electric chair death penalty.

P.S. (4 March 2013) 

That adult is actually the mother of those leafhoppers! 

Variety Shows!

I will veer away for a while from Oxygen Generators! I've been posting spiders, larvae, butterflies and other insects. I might be forgetting the bigger animals we have around. I am sorry for adulterating the contents of my blogsite, but please bear with me, i miss our pets! Considering that a lot of my files always contain many shots about them, I am wondering why they just stayed there as files. So i will post them here as some intermission. Variety programs have intermissions, don't they? Even political speeches have some intermission sometimes, so here are my intermissions from Oxygen Generators posts.

Cats have wonderful sense of smell and hearing. They can discern the type of sound that we humans cannot even hear. That means they know the difference of an approaching cricket, or a scurrying mouse! And they smell differently too, which i think favors anything fishy. But i am sure, they don't share with us our abhorrence for their urine and litter, which is among the worst smell for me!

 If nothing is available to keep them warm, they warm themselves through a very close huddle.

 And they are very resourceful too! Who will think of a hot as a wonderful sleeping quarter!

 Aren't they sweet?

 he is male so a little dominant

 he is male too and looks wary of the more mature older generation sibling

 they have lots of expressions, can you guess what he saw to give this stare?

unassuming, he doesn't care at all, he is just in deep contemplation!