🪲Amazonia🪰, pt 4: 🪳Bugs, 🐞bugs, 🦗bugs🦟

These little jewels are like glittering gemstones... it's a treasure hunt all over the rainforest!

Holy bugs*, batman. 

    *ok, ok, i know spiders and millipedes aren't technically bugs, but "arthropod, arthropod, arthropod" is kind of a mouthful. 
       So just take the term 'bug' in this post as the colloquial, m'kay?  

More than 90% of the animal species in the Amazon are insects, and in Tambopata alone there are over 1200 species of butterflies. The Amazon rainforest may have as many as 2.5 million different species of insects, but only a tiny fraction of species are known to scientists. And there may be millions of individuals within each species - some scientists estimate that 30% of the animal biomass of Amazonia is made up of ants alone!!

The sheer diversity of bug life here in the rainforest is mind-boggling. We encountered so many types - and some were absolutely stunning in their shapes, patterns, and colors - like these amazing guys:

Some of the most intriguing ones were found just on the handrails of the lodge - probably because they were so easy to spot. Others did their best to hide themselves through camouflage - it was astounding how closely some of them resembled leaves!!! 

The praying mantis was particularly interesting, since it swayed and bobbed as it walked, mimicking a leaf blowing in the wind. It was absolutely mesmerizing to watch.

🦋 🦋 🦋 🦋 🦋

Almost all differences between butterflies and moths are generalizations, and we definitely saw outliers to many of the butterfly vs moth 'rules'. Things like diurnal vs nocturnal? Colorful vs dull? Open vs closed wings while resting? Nope.

Clockwise from upper left:
Ceramidia moth, Tersa sphinx moth,
Leafy sphinx moth, Tiger moth 

 We found plenty of exceptions to the rules... While normally people think of butterflies as brilliantly colorful and moths as dull and boring, that was hardly the case.

The gorgeous Green-banded urania is the only diurnal moth found here, and is much more colorful than the crethon daggerwing butterfly next to it:

How breathtaking are these caterpillars??? 

The one top was huge - about the size of a hot dog, with menacingly spiky spines coated in venom. 

The bottom one I originally thought was just a tiny bit of fluff... until it started moving! Think of a teensy tiny mop atop the world's smallest roomba...

This was one of my favorite butterflies - the glasswing, with its see-through wings. Plus, it liked to play dead - it flopped over when I put it on my palm, but then Paul picked it up and started to drop it, and in the middle of its free-fall, it flew away. 

Amongst all the cool things I saw in the Amazon, this one made my jaw drop!! It's the pupa of a false burnet moth, contained in a mesh cocoon.

Closeup of the cocoon

🕷 🕷 🕷 🕷 🕷

The Amazon is NOT for the arachnophobic - not only are there thousands of spiders, but some of them are H-U-G-E. They all seemed to come out during our night walks (or maybe we just noticed them more). Along with the fluorescent scorpions and spiders, literally thousands of other arachnids appear at night. 

Every step would send large jumping spiders skittering away. Flashlights on the trees lit up tail-less whip spiders and enormous water spiders. We also found a ton of orb weavers in the shine of our flashlights, probably because their bodies were the size of ping-pong balls.

There is definitely something undeniably creepy about seeing so many spiders, but it was hard not to be fascinated as well. I didn't necessarily want to get my face too close to them, but c'mon! How cool is this?!

Nobody really knows why the spider decorates its web with a cross, but some theorize it's to make the spider look bigger... or it's a warning for birds not to fly into the web.

You can easily see the sexual dimorphism of the golden silk orb-weaver here - the gorgeous female is in the center of the web, and the smaller male can be seen above her.

She's so pretty!

We encountered this beauty of a banana spider, or Brazilian wandering spider, in the middle of the trail on one of our night walks. But I've got to be honest... it was kinda scary since they are one of the most aggressive and venomous spiders known to man:

Banana spiders are an invasive
species in Madre de Dios, brought
in with the non-native banana plants.

We saw a few tarantulas as well - the chicken tarantula, that Paul said was named so because it takes care of its young like a chicken (and yes, when it startled back into its hole, several smaller babies ran in after it). But my favorite was the huge pink-toed tarantula that showed up on the boardwalk - you could easily see her pink toes!

Social spiders live in colonies of up to 50,000 individuals, and they capture prey together and share in the spoils. I would NOT want to accidentally walk into a social spider nest!

Their metropolis can be 25 ft long!

And in the mid afternoon when the sun was hottest, so many different little jumping spiders would appear on the handrails! So pretty!

🐛 🐛 🐛 🐛 🐛

The many many many many many many legs of the rainforest millipedes

Did you know? The difference between a millipede and a centipede isn't the number of legs (and they rarely have a thousand, or even a hundred legs). 

Millipedes have two sets of legs per body segment, while centipedes only have one. And generally speaking, their behaviors are different too - millipedes will roll up into a ball when startled, while centipedes will run away. And millipedes for the most part eat decaying plant matter, while centipedes are predators. But both can be harmful to humans - centipedes are venomous and will bite; millipedes are poisonous and secrete toxins.

 

🐜 🐜 🐜 🐜 🐜

Good lord, the ants.

We saw little ants. Big ants. Solitary ants. Swarms of ants. Trails of ants. They crawled up our pants. We ate ants. We* purposely let ourselves get stung by ants. 

*and by 'we' I mean the boys** in our group.
     **and by 'boys' I mean the two Cambridge professors.   NOT the 13-year old.

But it was for science!

The tarangara, or 'devil' tree has a symbiotic relationship with colonies of Pseudomyrmex triplarinus, a tiny but highly aggressive fire ant. The tarangara is used by the local indigenous people as a punishment tree - depending on the crime, perpetrators are tied to the tree for hours or days and allowed to be bitten by the ants who are guardians and protectors of the tree. Each individual bite "feels like a cigarette burn," claimed Paul, and in three days a criminal kept tied to the tree would be dead from the bites, suffering in agony the entire time. Of course Anil and David had to see what the fuss was about, and allowed themselves to be bitten by a single ant... (sigh... 🙄)

The bite, two days later.

Luckily, when we were invited to try being stung by a bullet ant, everyone wisely opted out.

So many ants marched through this path that they dug their own trench into the dirt!

Another intriguing ant was the Army ant, which is used by indigenous people to close up wounds. Yes, some of us had been attacked by them on our first night in the forest and we feared them as a menace, but they could be useful as well. Paul showed us how to find just the soldier ants, who have huge mandibles and large yellow heads. After grabbing the body and maneuvering the bite in just the right place, you can twist off the body and the jaw continues its hold - creating an effective suture.

It was interesting what was helpful and what was deadly in the rainforest. There were plants we couldn't even touch, but ants and termites that we could eat. 

Anil, having a mid-morning snack

And so we did... (yes, I did try them... the ants had kind of an earthy, nutty flavor. I did NOT enjoy the popping of the exoskeleton though...) Additionally, Paul taught us how to find edible termite nests, where we could find a snack if we got lost in the forest. They were smaller than the ants, which meant they were a bit more palatable - but I still thought they tasted a bit like dirt. 

🐝 🐝 🐝 🐝 🐝

Speaking of nests, look at the cool forms of these bee/wasp nests! I was particularly intrigued by the entrance to the Yellow bee hive - it looked just like a flower!! Yellow bees don't sting, but they will get into your hair and chew on it, giving you the most elegant and stylish haircut.

Overall, despite how many bugs we saw, I actually expected to be bothered a lot more than I was. Not sure if it was the dousing of bug spray that helped, or the head-to-toe covering, or the mosquito nets, but the handful of bug bites that I got each day were nowhere close to what I had anticipated. And it was the rare bug that found its way inside my mosquito net that freaked me out - but otherwise, I felt like as a visitor into their world, I could appreciate their richness and diversity.