Hi! Welcome to Sam’s Invertebrates, here you can find information about different invertebrates. There are care guides to provide you information about keeping these fascinating animals as pets as well as frequent posts to inform you about the latest discoveries in the insect universe. We cover mantises, beetles, arachnids and more! Enjoy!
You can find care sheets here:
Giant Asian Mantis | Ghost Mantis | Western Tailless Whip | Zebra Spider | Peacock Mantis
Hi! Today, I have unboxed a tailless whip scorpion or damon medius and some porcellio laevis! Check it out on my YouTube channel. He is an epic arachnid! These invertebrates eat roaches – any kind like red runners or dubia roaches, as well as eating crickets. They are sit-and-wait predator like mantids! Enjoy!
You may see, often, these small, red arachnids! They are the red velvet mites! As larvae, these invertebrates are parasites to other small invertebrates or other insect nymphs. However, as adults, like the one seen above, they are active predators, hunting insects similar to its size – like ant workers, termites and other insects’ larvae or nymphs. As you can see, they possess a vibrant red colouration and have many hairs covering its abdomen and legs like velvet. I took the photo of this velvet mite using a macro lens which has magnified it greatly, you can even see the small debris around it – which is really just grit and tiny rocks – is enormous and larger than the red velvet mite. These mites are only 5-6 mm long which is large compared to other mite species and is comparable to the size of an ant worker. These minuscule arachnids live in the soil for most of the year, but they come out shortly after a substantial rain. However, I have seen different patterns in their activity above ground. In their early instars or larval stage, they can be seen as small red specks on invertebrates, they are nourishing themselves on the nutrients of another insect – or more simply, parasitism.
These are two dubia roach (blaptica dubia) shots I took with a macro lens. In the top photo, you can see the hooks on the legs and the mandibles covering the mouth. On the bottom, you can see a roach’s shell with rough, irregular bumps and crevices.
I recorded some brutal wasps (vespula vulgaris) tearing off chunks from a caterpillar carcass. They pulpified the insect larva and the one on the left cut a large chunk and flew off with it. If you wondered which youtube channel I upload these short videos to, it’s Samsteroo42, a subscription would be much appreciated! Thanks for watching!
This is the remarkable velvet ant! Despite being called the velvet ‘ant’, it is actually a species of wasp, females lack wings whereas males do. This bizarre insect has an incredibly thick exoskeleton, aposematic colouration and a very painful sting. These multiple defenses are present to avoid its predation in the wild. Velvet ants are colloquially named ‘cow killers’ in defence to their excruciatingly painful sting. Velvet ants come in a variety of colours – reds, oranges, silver, whites and yellows. With patterns on their abdomen and head regions. Thus, velvet ants are popular in the pet trade in the US, caught wild as they cannot be bred. Their larvae are parasitoids (meaning they consume other insects offered by their mothers) of other solitary Hymenopterans’ larval stages. As well as, other insect young. To give an impression of how hard and difficult it is to penetrate the velvet ants’ shells, insect pins find it hard to break through, and even bend when the pressure is added.
Fascinating Phasmids is the first episode of Interesting Invertebrates. This episode consists of rare and colourful stick insects (or phasmids) such as the recently discovered achrioptera manga. If you have any suggestions for the next invertebrate I should cover, write your suggestion in the comments of the video below. Enjoy!
This is the Giant Isopod, a gigantic, aquatic relative of the centimetre-or-so long woodlice in your garden. Woodlice (roly-pollies, pillbugs etc.) or isopods are actually a terrestrial crustacean rather than an insect or ‘bug’… and this one is a massive, marine one! Bathynomus giganteus, similarly to other isopods, have a marsupium or brood pouch – where their young develop and emerge as mini versions of the adults. They are abundant at depths of 310-2140 m in cold waters in the West Atlantic. Bathynomus giganteus, specifically, is classified a supergiant species at 17-50 cm long!! The ‘giant’ classification in giant isopods (and most of the bathynomus genus) are typically 8-15 cm long, which is still large. These crustaceans have two reflective, compound eyes, seven pairs of legs of which the first are modified like the pedipalps of spiders (or manipulating food) and have a tough exoskeleton. Isn’t it fascinating?
Thought I’d share with you a short clip of my Giant Asian Mantis (hierodula membranacea) swiftly seizing a locust. You can see more epic clips at my youtube channel, Samsteroo42. Enjoy!
Ecuadorian insects are crazy! The locust pictured above has stripes of amber and black on each segment of the body. Scorpions, tarantulas, exotic ants such as bullet ants, locusts, lacewings – practically every insect lives in Ecuador! These insects come in remarkable variations and colours some with unnatural features like spines and extra appendages.
This caterpillar has almost luminous yellow-green stripes, orange legs and head segments and a red head. Insects that live in Ecuador include the green grouse locust (holocerus taurus) which is small and have spiny projections from either side of the body. However, I find treehoppers the most interesting – vibrant colours like orange, green and blue. They are very small and have ‘helmets’ with odd spines (only four or so) in strange shapes. Some look like other insects perched on sticks – namely, ants and wasps. Yet, there are likely thousands of unique species and variations which remain undiscovered in the rainforests of South America – Ecuador, Peru and such places!
Anomalocarids are an ancient marine arthropod relative. They are abnormal and resemble enlarged predatory shrimp, growing up to 1 m long. These giant hunters dominated the small tropical oceans where modern China is located today and ruled the Cambrian period. They are the earliest forms of an apex predator, feeding on every organism in the prehistoric seas, such as trilobites; hard-bodied invertebrates, and priapulid worms; which are soft-bodied invertebrates. Anomalocarids have enormous front appendages lined with serrated barbs for seizing unfortunate prey. These shrimp-like creatures may have flipped the hard-bodied trilobites over to expose the much softer underside. Cambrian marine life was bizarre, creatures such as hallucigenia crawled across the ocean floor like spiked, long-legged caterpillars!
Examples of larger organisms thriving in the cambrian seas are trilobites. Trilobites were a very successful group, they survived multiple mass extinctions and diversified each time. Unfortunately, they became extinct prior to the Triassic period, and thus never co-existed with dinosaurs and remain extinct today. However, during their time they were the first adapting form of life in existence. For example, multiple species developed large protruding spines, likely present to offend possible predators. Others became more stream-lined and formed large compound eyes, these species would have actively swam through open seas. On the other hand, most early species were flat and lacked large eyes – adapted to consuming organic matter and even burying beneath thin layers of rock and sand.