The Flying Saucer At Sunset

Lenticular clouds (Altocumulus lenticularis) are stationary lens-shaped clouds with a smooth layered appearance that form in the troposphere, usually above mountain ranges. One was spotted in Singapore recently...

Eyes Of 30,000 Honeycombs

With 30,000 individual facets, dragonflies have the most number of facets among insects. Each facet, or ommatidia, creates its own image, and the dragonfly brain has eight pairs of descending visual neurons to compile those thousands of images into one picture...

A Kaleidoscope Of Colours, Shapes And Patterns

Spectacular and innovative in design, the Flower Dome replicates the cool-dry climate of Mediterranean regions like South Africa, California and parts of Spain and Italy. Home to a collection of plants from deserts all over the world, it showcases the adaptations of plants to arid environments...

Lightning Strikes, Not Once, But Many Times

Unlike light, lightning does not travel in a straight line. Instead, it has many branches. These other branches flashed at the same time as the main strike. The branches are actually the step leaders that were connected to the leader that made it to its target...

Are You My Dinner Tonight?

A T-Rex has 24-26 teeth on its upper jaw and 24 more on its lower jaw. Juveniles have small, sharp blade-shaped teeth to cut flesh, whereas adults have huge, blunt, rounded teeth for crushing bones. Is the T-Rex a bone-crushing scavenger?

Males Have Bigger Jaws

Bukit Batok Nature Park
North-West, Singapore
August 2012
Sunny
 
Merlion Wayfarer visited the Quarry Parkland today and found out that 4 Legs Good, 6 Legs Gooder, 8 Legs Goodest. Here's one interesting find...
  
This little one was looking right at Merlion Wayfarer on some bushes along the pathway to the playground. Often, interesting finds can be found along common walkways. All that is needed is a sharp eye for colour differences and movement.
   
   
This is a Myrmarachne Elongata (Ant-Mimicking Spider) Male. For this species, the males have much bigger jaws than the females. Notice how the top half of the body is protected by an armoured core?
   
Interesting layout of the eyes...

The huge jaws can be opened at will...


The full albums are available at:




4 Legs Good, 6 Legs Gooder, 8 Legs Goodest

Bukit Batok Nature Park
North-West, Singapore
August 2012
Sunny
   
Merlion Wayfarer visited a scenic Quarry Parkland today.
  
Sightings
  • Arachnida - Salticidae (Jumping Spiders) : Myrmarachne Elongata (Ant-Mimicking Spider) Male  (See "Males Have Bigger Jaws")
  • Odonata - Anisoptera (Dragonflies) : Aethriamanta Gracilis (Pond Adjutant)
  • Orthoptera (Grasshoppers, Crickets, Locusts) : Grasshopper [unidentified]
  • Arachnida - Araneidae (Orb-Weavers) : Spider [unidentified]
  • Lepidoptera - Rhopalocera (Butterflies) : Lycaenidae - Eooxylides Tharis Distanti (Branded Imperial)
  • Coleoptera (Beetles) : Beetle [unidentified]
  • Reptilia - Squamata - Lacertilia (Lizards) : Eutropis multifasciata (Common / Many-lined Sun Skink)
  
The Pond Adjutant rests near the freshwater quarry pool…
  
A beautiful golden Orb-Weaver spider. Note the huge spinneret on its abdomen…
  
Another one was within walking distance...
 
Another unidentified orb-weaver...
 
The trailers on this Branded Imperial are slightly shorter…
 
There were two of them here on the leaves - One was more greenish with the other more bluish…
  
Lots of grasshoppers in the secondary forest here…
  
This Sun Skink seems to be in a dating mood with an especially bright colouring…

The full albums are available at:


Quarry Parkland

Bukit Batok Nature Park
North-West, Singapore
August 2012
Sunny
  
The Bukit Batok Nature Park lies on the outskirts of one of Singapore's newest housing estates, Bukit Batok New Town. It is a small, peaceful park developed on an abandoned quarry site where the quiet visitor should be able to see some of the local wildlife which has adapted to an urban parkland environment.
  
Bukit Batok used to be a sleepy rural area with forest, farm lands and factories. Granite quarrying was among the early activities there since the 1950s. In fact Bukit Batok in Malay means "Coughing Hills" as the blasting made the hills appear to be coughing.
  
Developed from an abandoned quarry site in 1988, the Park has undulating and meandering footpaths leading to scenic look-out points, some more than 10-storeys high. The quarry now forms a scenic pool, with a small stream leaving from it.
  
Scenic freshwater pool formed from quarry blasting...
   
Merlion Wayfarer spotted a variety of fauna during her walk-walk session. Read about it at  "4 Legs Good, 6 Legs Gooder, 8 Legs Goodest"...
  • Arachnida - Salticidae (Jumping Spiders) : Myrmarachne Elongata (Ant-Mimicking Spider) Male  (See "Males Have Bigger Jaws")
  • Odonata - Anisoptera (Dragonflies) : Aethriamanta Gracilis (Pond Adjutant)
  • Orthoptera (Grasshoppers, Crickets, Locusts) : Grasshopper [unidentified]
  • Arachnida - Araneidae (Orb-Weavers) : Spider [unidentified]
  • Lepidoptera - Rhopalocera (Butterflies) : Lycaenidae - Eooxylides Tharis Distanti (Branded Imperial)
  • Coleoptera (Beetles) : Beetle [unidentified]
  • Reptilia - Squamata - Lacertilia (Lizards) : Eutropis multifasciata (Common / Many-lined Sun Skink)


The full albums are available at:




The Hairy Danger Of Tussocks

Singapore Botanic Gardens
Central, Singapore
19 August 2012
Sunny

Merlion Wayfarer has been trying to figure out the identity of the mysterious yellow caterpillar since she saw it. (See "Defense Mechanisms Of The Moth Cat".) She asked quite a few of her nature-lover friends yet they were not able to provide an answer.  The only clue that she received was that it was definitely not a butterfly cat. That was why its photo could not be found on the Butterfly Circle website too.
 

She decided to venture further and posted on the NPSS  forum. Within 24 hours, kokhuitan has positively identified it as a Tussock Moth Caterpillar. (Thanks!)

Feeling curious about the name (“tussock” refers to a clump or tuft of hair, grass, leaves, etc.), Merlion Wayfarer decided to launch her own investigation.

She found some interesting facts about what Tussock Moths:
  • “Lymantriidae is a family of moths. Many of its component species are referred to as "Tussock moths" of one sort or another. The caterpillar, or larval, stage of these species often has a distinctive appearance of alternating bristles and haired projections. Like other families of moths, many Tussock Moth caterpillars have urticating hairs (often hidden among longer, softer hairs).”  (Wikipedia 2012)
  •       
  • "Lymantria means "defiler", and several species are important defoliators of forest trees."  (Wikipedia 2012)
       
  • Adult moths of this family do not feed. They usually have muted colours (browns and greys), although some are white, and tend to be very hairy. Some females are flightless, and some have reduced wings. Usually the females have a large tuft at the end of the abdomen. The males, at least, have tympanal organs. They are mostly nocturnal.”  (Wikipedia 2012)
  •      
  • "The larvae are also hairy, often with hairs packed in tufts, and in many species the hairs break off very easily and are extremely irritating to the skin. This highly effective defence serves the moth throughout its life cycle as the hairs are incorporated into the cocoon, from where they are collected and stored by the emerging adult female at the tip of the abdomen and used to camouflage and protect the eggs as they are laid. In others, the eggs are covered by a froth that soon hardens, or are camouflaged by material the female collects and sticks to them."  (Wikipedia 2012)
  •   
  • "They tend to have broader host plant ranges than most Lepidoptera. Most feed on trees and shrubs, but some are known from vines, herbs, grasses and lichens."  (Wikipedia 2012)
  •   
  • Jennifer Viegas featured a few such cats with a video about a walk by Mark Fraser  (Discovery News, 2009)
  •   
  • There’s even a little story about someone who observed a cat all the way to an adult!  (Jacqueline, 2012)   

  
She found mostly North American mentions. For a while she was wondering if Tussock Moths can be only there. Until…
   
An outbreak of acute pruritic rash occurred in March 1990 among 141 residents of a high-rise public housing estate in Bukit Panjang, Singapore. The typical rash consisted of urticarial lesions distributed over the limbs and trunk. The outbreak was associated with a transient increase in tussock moths in the residential estate following an unusual, short dry spell. The aetiology was established when patch tests with crude moth material produced similar eruptions in 5 out of 7 adult volunteers between 40 min and 12 h. Pharmacological experiments with an aqueous extract of moth hairs in isolated guinea pig ileum elicited a response similar to that induced by histamine.
(PubMed.gov, 1991)

Yes,  Tussock Moths Cats can be DANGEROUS! And they really do exist in Singapore! She is certainly glad she resisted the temptation to take up the cute furry little yellow cat... Phew!



Sources

It's Spider Season Now!

Punggol Park Connector
North-East, Singapore
20 August 2012
Sunny
  
Merlion Wayfarer was at the Punggol Park Connector today for a short 45 minutes and it was among the most bountiful sessions for her!

Big-Jawed Spider Juveniles

 

Somehow, Merlion Wayfarer forgot that the photos she took were mostly juveniles. She forgot about their colourless bodies, their see-through textures, and their smaller sizes. And she spent hours looking through online to ID them.


  

It was only after looking more closely at a few photos sequentially that she realized that what she originally thought of as a different species of spider was in fact juveniles at different periods of their lives!


Juvenile this one might be - its body isn't even properly elongated - but look at the size of its jaws and palps at this young age!


Neoscona Nautica (Brown Sailor Spider)

Instead of finding this little one "below the ceilings of dark and poorly-maintained huts or toilets" (Koh 2000), it was right there in the open, in broad daylight. And it was big - at more than 1cm. Very obvious, as all around it were smaller big-jawed juveniles, and plop - There it was a big blob on a sheaf of grass.

 
Notice the shape of its head and the position of its eyes when it is in this position. Also see how its eyes can be positioned in two different directions.


Tetragnatha Mandibulata (Common Big-Jawed Spider)

Merlion Wayfarer spotted this from afar due to its size - Its total length was about her entire palm size! And thought she got lucky finding a Whip Spider or a Twig-Like Feather-Legged Spider. However, on closer examination, she realized it was a Common Big-Jawed Spider.


Behold those majestic-looking big black jaws...

Initially there was some doubt that it was even a spider. But that quickly dispelled when she saw it rappel downwards and scuttle into the bushes in lighting timing later!

Juvenile Big-Jawed Spider Attempts Dinner

As it was near dusk, the spiders were very active searching for their dinner and repairing their webs. Merlion Wayfarer was fortunate enough to catch a Day-Flying Moth fly smack into a juvenile Big-Jawed Spider's web.


Excluding the wingspan, the Moth was about three times the size of the Spider. And look at how hard the young Spider had to work to inject its venom into the Moth!


The Big-Jawed Spider's web was the sticky kind. (Not all webs are sticky!) Despite this, it could not hold the huge Moth and the Moth kept twirling and spinning. Guess it was akin to a ride on a rodeo for the spider!

Finally all the threads snapped and the Moth freefalled onto the ground. Initially it couldn't even move. It took some time for the Spider's venom to wear off before it could even flap its wings. Phew... now we all know!


The full albums are available at
 Merlion Wayfarer Goes Green's Picasa Web Albums 



References

The Rainforest In The Middle Of Orchard Road

Singapore Botanic Gardens
Singapore
19 August 2012
Sunny

Merlion Wayfarer was at Singapore Botanic Gardens today. Instead of the usual "crowd-infested" paths, she decided to go for the swath of untouched 6-hectare rainforest. The path there is not easily visible from the main walkways. Instead, one must either climb up a flight of wooden stairs or disappear into a meadnering little path to find it.

Entwined vines in the middle of Orchard Road...

Here are some of the interesting sights spotted today...
Orthetrum Sabina (Variegated Green Skimmer) resting on a stalk of grass with a moult just below it...
    
An abundance of Aethriamanta Gracilis (Pond Adjutant) dragonflies around Symphony Lake...



Two very photogenic bugs pose for a shot...

An ant with a shiny body like polished metal...

An ant which can carry a big furball under its belly...
   
And ants which have symobiotic relationships with friends...

A bench to commemorate a family member who made a big contribution to their lives...

Tourists, foreign workers and friends, all having fun here in the bright morning sunshine...

  

The full albums are available at:


Defense Mechanisms Of The Moth Cat

Singapore Botanic Gardens
Central, Singapore
19 August 2012
Sunny
   
Today Merlion Wayfarer spotted a moth caterpillar with spikes so soft that you almost wished it were a soft toy!
  
The softest-looking spikes. They were not all uniformly white
-  There was a smooth mix of both white and dark spikes...
 
Fascinating legs with little V-shaped shoes...
 
How its butt looks like - Note the legs with shoes extend all the way here!
It got a bit defensive when it realized it was the centre of attention, and that made its spikes even more perked up...
  
After some time, it just decided to jump off the rope barrier, landed on the ground
and stopped completely still for a long, long time...
 

You will be remembered, the Moth Cat, with the cheery face...

What was it? Did Merlion Wayfarer manage to ID this mysterious caterpillar?
See "The Hairy Danger Of Tussocks" - coming up next!




More photos are available on :

 
   

Spiders With Eyes Looking In 8 Different Directions

Singapore Botanic Gardens
Central, Singapore
August 2012
Sunny
   
Merlion Wayfarer hadn't planned for a spider shoot - Not in a forest boardwalk with rope barricades on both sides, and definitely not in a park with hundreds of people on a Sunday morning. However, nice surprises happened.  :)
A small Nephila Pilipes (Golden Web Spider) Female in the middle of the leaf litter in the Rainforest...
    
A shy Cyclosa Spider in Lower Palm Valley Road
hidden behind the body parts of the insects in its larder...

  
Neoscona Rufofemorata (Brown-Legged Spider) Female in Lower Palm Valley Road
which got up and shook itself before resting in its yoga position again...

    
It was able to balance sideways on its web...
        
When it was looking directly at the camera - See the gleam in its eyes?
  
When it was not - All its eyes were looking in different directions!
  
Two mating Opadometa Fastigata (Pear-Shaped Leucauge) spiders near Symphony Lake. Kinda hard to see what they were doing
as there was no way to get near them without getting one's feet muddied...
(A post on NPSS and 12h later, tchuanye has helped to ID that they were indeed mating.
The one on the left was the male and the one on the right - the bigger one - was the female. Thanks!)
  
Interesting phenomenon with a Leucauge Argentina (Silver Leucauge) acting like a Cyclosa Spider 
- The light reflecting off the eyes of the bee's leftovers could be seen!
     
  


More photos are available on :