They Don’t Call It a Passion Flower for Nothing

I’ve always liked passion flowers, with their exotic colors, wavy petals, and pop-up anthers and stigmas, as if they were wearing a Carmen Miranda hat. A passion flower looks otherworldly and yet also, just so slightly, artificial: the kind of flower that should adorn a cocktail glass filled with a bright blue mixed drink named something like “Pacific Crush.”

That said, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that it’s something of a good-time flower.

Of course, all flowers are by their very nature good-time gals (and guys). I’ve always been intrigued by pollination, a remarkable adaption through which flowering plants have contrived a means of having sex via animals. Pretty kinky, when you stop to think about it; who thought that daisies had it in ‘em?

And of course the animals get something out of it as well. Nectar, for one thing, of course. But I see bees rolling about ecstatically in the bowls of wild roses, and I can’t help but think that they’re having some fun of their own.

I wondered about this again today, when I saw enormous bees (I think they were carpenter bees) absolutely obsessed with passion flowers.

These bees were covered with pollen as they made their circuits around the flowers, greedily sucking up every bit of sweetness with an intensity that certainly seemed lustful. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such an enthusiastic example of pollination; the bees were utterly enraptured:

["Yes! Yes! This side!"]

["Now this side!"]

["Now this side too!"--She seemed to say.]

A better person would have looked away, but, as we’ve already established, I am not that person. Instead, I took pictures for your prurient perusal.

Somebody ought to be ashamed.

{A note: I do write all text and take all pictures. Please do not reproduce either without my permission.}

Splendor in the Grass

Last week, displaying the kind of frugality that I am known for, I bought a macro lens (hey, there was a sale).

Now, although I have longed for a macro lens for a long time, I didn’t think I needed one in order to recognize and value the world around me. After all, didn’t I have a Ph.D. in biology? Wasn’t my dissertation research focused on intertidal marine invertebrates? Hadn’t I attended an extremely small liberal-arts college? Surely I was already well-primed to appreciate microcosms.

But the macro lens has not only brought into gorgeously clear focus the majesty of creatures I might usually dismiss as pests—it has made me realize that I too can look more closely at and see more of the beasts who go about their business all around me.

For example, during my lunch break on Friday, I happened to pass by some of the many ornamental grasses that homeowners in DC seem obsessed with planting. Because I had my new lens with me, I decided to give the grasses a second look, even though I was pretty sure there couldn’t be anything much in them

Imagine my surprise, then, to find a grasshopper—one of many—peering out at me as it clung to a blade of grass.

And that’s not all. In the few days since I’ve gotten the lens, I’ve seen more spiders, caterpillars, and bizarre shield-shaped beetle-y things than I’ve ever seen before.

[this tiny caterpillar is eating a rose petal]

And here I was, someone who was so smugly certain that I noticed what others didn’t—the hawk stooping for a kill, the snail poised on a stem.

It’s always nice to be reminded of the power that a new perspective—whether it’s brought about through a telescope, a magnifying lens, or a state of mind—has to make visible the humbling complexities of a universe in which other worlds exist below, above, within, around, and in the interstices of our own.

{A note: I do write all text and take all pictures. Please do not reproduce either without my permission.}

Undomesticated Peeves Part 2

“Oh, no, he’s crawling on the fruit salad!”

“Watch out—he’ll sting you!”

I have complained before—quite eloquently, I believe, and at length—about people’s deeply irritating tendency to refer to any animal they see as “he,” regardless of the fact that they’re likely to be wrong at least half the time. This is bad enough.

What’s even worse is when people refer to individuals of social-insect species—like most common bees and ants—as “he,” because in this case they’re virtually guaranteed to be wrong.

All those scurrying ants transporting bits of smushed candy bar or lifting huge beetles or biting each other’s limbs off? Female.

All those bees rolling with orgiastic ecstasy in the nectar-filled bowls of flower blossoms? Female.

Those wasps circling your picnic table with alarmingly predatory glints in their faceted eyes? Female.

Among most of the true “eusocial” animals—species that live in colonies and whose members have divisions of labor based on reproductive ability or function—a male’s only role is as a sex object. (Considering that, it’s a shame that they’re called “drones” rather than, say, “gigolos.”) There are definitely exceptions to this rule—that’s what’s so great about animal behavior and ecology: there are always exceptions to rules—but by and large, that’s the case. You’ll have one (sometimes more) reproductive female, and then a bunch of (often sterile) females that do all the work of cleaning, caring for offspring, gathering food, and defending the nest/hive/colony.

Eusociality is a fascinating set-up (for more detail, read Nicola Plowe’s Introduction to Eusociality), most common among bees, wasps, ants, termites, and aphids. Researchers have (so far) found only a very few non-insect species that are eusocial: sponge-dwelling snapping shrimp (Synalpheus spp.) and naked mole rats.

But back to my point: the ant heading towards that puddle of Coke, the bee thrumming with excitement among the wild roses, the wasp that stung you three times on the arm—don’t call them “he.”

Now, don’t feel too bad about not having known this. Practically any movie (or commercial) with anthropomorphized social insects has gotten this wrong, thus ingraining erroneous information into our collective consciousness. Nevertheless, it is wrong—not just half-wrong-tinged-with-chauvinism, as is the case with most “he” attributions—but almost completely wrong.

There are exceptions: if you spot a male bee mating with a female, for example, then you can say “he,” as in, “Oh my god! His penis broke off inside her and now he’s falling to his death?!?” (Trust me, I’m not making this up.)

Otherwise, though, for the bees and ants, stick with “she.” It’s safer all around.

{A note: I do write all text and take all pictures. Please do not reproduce either without my permission.}

Wild Wildlife: High-Altitude Pollination

I was in Boulder, briefly, this past week, and I was not eaten by a mountain lion (something I was, I admit, a little afraid of). In fact, I saw no large mammals at all (apart from people), which was no hardship at all, really, when you consider that most of them could kill you. I was a little more frustrated by the cruel, taunting attitudes of the local birds, who either refused to stand conveniently next to measuring devices so that I could determine whether they were ravens or crows or else hid in trees, cheeping like finches or crossbills or who knows what and staying determinedly concealed by leaves.

Insects were my friends, though; they were so focused on nectar that they couldn’t have cared less if I took pictures of their pollinating activities. It made me wonder whether there’s anything different about pollination at high altitudes, the way there are different rules for baking; and then I wondered if all plants in the Denver/Boulder area consider themselves members of the Mile-High Club.

If so, they’re not telling…

{A note: I do write all text and take all pictures. Please do not reproduce either without my permission.}

"Misanthrope" Is My Middle Name

(Only I spell it with a V.)

[this is not the Scarab of Misfortune
for Stupid People,
but it should be]

I was in a bad mood this morning; it might have had something to do with having to partially disassemble a futon and move it into the bedroom before 9am, though I’m willing to consider other explanations as well. I took a walk in the zoo to cheer myself up, but I wasn’t able to leave the house until 10:30am or so, by which point the zoo was already chock-full of humanity—or humans at least.

Well, no one likes crowds. But I also don’t like people. Some people, sure, but I think you’ll agree with me that, as a species, we’re not so great. (History and politics bear me out on this quite well.) After I had dealt with not only the press of people but overhearing two different sets of visitors arguing, respectively, about whether the frogs in a pond and prairie dogs in their enclosure were "real" (did they miss the big “Zoo” sign out front??), I had had enough, so I gave up on trying to get near the exhibits and focused again on the greenery and the beasts I might find within it.

It worked out pretty well; I got more space, and no one hung around making asinine comments.

[Is that bug real??]

{A note: I do write all text and take all pictures. Please do not reproduce either without my permission.}

Wild Wildlife: They’re Everywhere! They’re Everywhere!

Summer is here—in fact has been here, in DC, for some time now—and the world is full of birds and bees and other insects. The zoo is full of them, too, so that everywhere I walk, I see catbirds fighting for territory, grackle fledglings puffing themselves up to gigantic proportions as they beg for food, and crows being harried by various smaller birds. If I stay in one place for a while and lean in towards a flower or plant or tree (much to the alarm of the other zoo visitors), I’ll see streams of ants and beetles, buzzing congregations of bees, and flurries of butterflies. Some days it’s more fun to focus my attention and camera on these than on the official zoo residents—partly because it’s often more of a challenge to get good photos of them, partly because I enjoy the smug feeling of having spotted organisms that almost no one else in the zoo ever notices.

I would like to take the time to really observe these various species’ behavior, and maybe I’ll have some opportunities to do so this summer (unless it’s prohibitively hot, in which case I’ll take the time to lie very still in an air-conditioned room while moaning plaintively). So far, though, I can only report on the aesthetic interest and appeal of the wildlife I saw.

For example: notice anything different about this daisy?

That’s right—it’s a doubled daisy, two flowers fused into one! I wonder if it attracts more pollinators than its fellows—and, if so, I wonder if the doubling trait is hereditary and could be selected for…

Or how about this lovely guy that I noticed on my way home as it wandered the leaves of a honey locust?

It’s probably some sort of horrible evil pest, but it’s just so cute—! (That’s right; just call me the queen of zoological objectivity.)

There’s something thrilling about being vividly reminded that every inch of the natural world is now teeming—seething—with life, and that the animals all around me are a far more diverse and plentiful group than I soemtimes realize. So, along with more entries on lemurs and lions and flamingos, expect more frequent updates on the other inhabitants of the zoo and neighborhood.

{A note: I do write all text and take all pictures. Please do not reproduce either without my permission.}

Wild Wildlife Returns!

Actually, it’s always there; it’s just that I only rarely get good pictures of these other animals and/or write entries about them. But lately I’ve been seeing a lot of birds and insects around the zoo, and luckily for me, at least some of them behaved photogenic-ly.

The monarch above was hanging around the milkweed behind the invertebrate house, just on the outside of their butterfly house. A few people leaving the exhibit were worried that the monarch had escaped from inside. (To my mind, they should be more worried about the children and adults in the butterfly house who try to catch the butterflies.)

And this mysterious bug (well, mysterious only because I don’t know what it is) appeared to be watching the elephants:


And these ladybugs were trying to have an intimate moment when I voyeuristically interrupted them:


This catbird had a very involved preening session near the otter enclosure:



And this goldfinch was very intent on getting every last seed out of these coneflowers:




And this bee, while she moved too fast to be really obliging, did pose herself alongside a beautiful waterlily: