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?

Journey To The East

4:24 AM  , , , , ,  

Punggol
North-East, Singapore
September 2012
Cloudy
     
The first day of September seemed to be a good day to wake up early to see sunrise. At 0600h, when the skies were still pitch black, Merlion Wayfarer set off on her journey to the east...

   
Today happened to be a cloudy day, and her hopes were not high as she looked out of the window. (Haiz!)

Monet-like clouds in the lightening skies...

Early morning boats zip past to the kelongs nearby...

Birds are up early too...

   
A lone stroller picking up shells on the shores for breakfast...
 
And... there is always a silver lining in the clouds. And at 0730 hours, the golden orb broke through the cumulus clouds and created an expanse of brilliant yellow which reflected off the sea in a golden stream.

   
It was Low Tide In The North-East when Merlion Wayfarer encountered Nature's Sonic Booooom at the beach. Did she get stunned?

The full albums are available at:


Read More

Males Have Bigger Jaws

9:26 AM  , , , , ,  

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:



Read More

4 Legs Good, 6 Legs Gooder, 8 Legs Goodest

9:15 AM  , , , , , , , , ,  

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:

Read More

Quarry Parkland

8:51 AM  , , ,  

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:



Read More

The Hairy Danger Of Tussocks

4:35 PM  , , ,  

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

Read More
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)