Giant Water BugBugs of the family Belostomatidae are fierce predators which stalk, capture and feed on aquatic crustaceans, fish and amphibians. They often lie motionless at the bottom of a body of water, attached to various objects, where they wait for prey to come near. They then strike, injecting a powerful digestive saliva with their mandible, and sucking out the liquefied remains. Their bite is considered one of the most painful that can be inflicted by any insect (the Schmidt Sting Pain Index excludes insects other than Hymenoptera); the longer the bug is allowed to inject its saliva, the worse the resulting bite, and as the saliva liquefies muscle tissue, it can in rare instances do permanent damage. Adults cannot breathe under water, and must surface periodically for air. Occasionally when encountered by a larger predator, such as a human, they have been known to "play dead" and emit a fluid from their anus. Due to this they are assumed dead by humans only to later "come alive" with painful results.
We gladly returned him back to the "wild" the next day.
frog eggs
This is a cluster of frog eggs we excitedly brought home this week to raise and then return to the wild as frogs. I happened across this remote lake and the abundance of eggs present there each spring, 10 years prior (where we collected and raised them when my now teen-aged son was small); and I had always intended to go back and collect more to do it again with my younger children.My mind is swimming with the notion of how much learning can be gleaned through this project (for all of us); ethics (what to do if we find out these are an invasive species? what possible impact could it have on the environment if we were to return them to a different location from which they came?...etc...); amphibious biology, life cycles, habitat; inspiration for sketching and creativity; learning to read and research online.... It's all pretty fascinating and engaging.
Within moments of arriving home with our eggs, Sam set to sketching his interpretation.For now we have a big jelly lump in a ten gallon aquarium. What will we have next week? Stay tuned, we will have fun!
Krista, this sounds great!! My boys too would love to attempt this. We've brought the taddies home from ponds and we've found plenty of tree frogs and kept them as temporary tenants, but we've never brought home the spawn yet. I'm inspired to get out looking.
ReplyDeleteInteresting point about the invasive species. You might be able to tell ahead of time (if you choose to of course) whether they are bull frogs or not. Many gov't sites online offer examples of the life stages because they need to be eradicated. In a favourite park where we go, called Campbell Valley Park the bulls have nearly eliminated the resident species, the green frog. I think the bullfrog's eggs and tadpoles will be quite big, but where you are there may be more species that are large than we have here, so a guide book may help (if you want to know ahead of time). Or the fun may be the process, and not the result:)
So exciting to be out mucking about in the ponds, waterways, streams and such-like again!! It's a favourite thing of ours to do too! I'm thinking of investing in some hip waders for the boys...