Saturday, December 3, 2016

Creepy cute critters

Last week I managed to find several strange critters on my walks with the dogs. The first one was the teeniest grasshopper on one of the new pecan nut trees. It kept creeping around the stem as I tried to photograph it. So I only have this one photo of it.
See how small this grasshopper is?

When I zoomed in on the bell-shaped flower, at first I thought it had a small mark on the petal. Looking closer, I saw it was a critter. 
 See the tiny critter?

Back home I noticed a millipede in the bathroom. Using a white sheet of paper, I slid it onto the page and carried it outside

We call this critter a shongolo. Note the zillions double rows of legs



The Millipede or Shongololo. They fall under the class Diplopoda and family Spirostreptrornorpha. Millipedes are arthropods, which means that they are invertebrates that have an exoskeleton. Their bodies are divided into segments, mostly two fused together, and each segment sports a couple of pairs of legs.



I'm linking to Saturday Critters here

HAPPY SATURDAY TO YOU ALL! 




4 comments:

  1. Hello Jo, great series of critter photos. The grasshopper is cute. Love the tiny insect. The Millipede is an interesting bug with all those legs. Thank you so much for linking up and sharing your post. Happy Saturday, enjoy your weekend!

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  2. great shot of the Shongololo, I like that name. zillions of legs is right.. I am sure he/she was so happy to be put back outside... that is a really tiny and oh so cute grasshopper

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  3. Nice set of photos. We have a very similar looking millipede here (Tasmania) that often comes into houses.

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  4. Fun to look for the little critters. I like how the shongololos come in so many colors in SA.

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