The Roly poly (woodlouse, sowbug, pillbug), if we can include isopod as well. The round black ones, not the flat grey ones. [Rachael Ray] They have gills and they live on land! How cool is that? [/Rachael Ray]
If isopods are too much of a reach then… um… well ants are amazing critters, and honeybees should be worshipped as tiny little gods for making mead possible, so maybe one of those. Fuzzy little spiders that don’t bite me are ok.
OH! It’s been so long since I’ve seen them that I forgot (thanks Tomndebb) - FIREFLIES!
Dragonflies: Deadly in both their laval and adult form, Dragonfly - Wikipedia. As adults they eat midges and mosquitoes amongst other insects, in their laval form they even eat small fish.
They are also often spectacularly coloured, and fly with great precision.
Luna moths and cicadas. But I like all mentioned so far, (love the fuzzy gray jumping spiders) as well as tiger beetles (they make a sound when you pick them up!). And did you know that the dark spots on a dragon fly’s wings are actually weights? Awesome.
I once saw a large dragonfly pick a fat cicada off a tree branch fly with him a short distance- then devour him. The cicada screamed bloody murder (and it was) *the whole time. * The scene took about 7 minutes, and when it was over I realized that my face was hurting from making the “holy crap that is a tiny horror” face throughout the entire noisy slaughter.
When I was a child, I would stand under the porch light for hours identifying insects. Yes, stand in the swarm of nocturnal flying things and pick them up, examine them, and research their behavior and habitats in my insect reference books. My family still talks about what a weird kid I was. I don’t do that anymore; but I will wade in creeks and rivers and turn over stones to examine all the aquatic insect larvae.
Favorite - Tarantula Hawks. They sting and paralyze tarantulas, lay an egg on the spider’s body which, in turn, feeds on the still-living (but paralyzed) tarantula. The larva will, apparently, avoid the vital organs to keep the spider fresh as long as possible.
Also, bearded dragons love the things. I like to think that they are like little shrimp cocktails that spice up its otherwise dreary diet of crickets and earthworms.
Odanata all the way. Sure the adults get to have aerial sex and cool iridescence, but it’s the youngsters that are really cool. BTW, the Wiki article keeps calling them ‘larva’, but technically they’re not, as they never pupate. Rather they’re ‘nymphs’, which don’t pupate but just turn into adults more-or-less gradually over a few moltings.
Anyway, dragonfly nymphs are vicious little predators that capture prey by unfolding their lower lips until the lip reaches out a full body-length away to grap prey with it’s jagged-toothed edge (it’s actually split down the middle and grabs prey from both sides). The lip then folds up again pulling the poor prey back into the mouthparts.
And these bad mo-fo’s of the insect kingdom can even prey on fish!
So I’m sitting in creeping bumper-to-bumper traffic a couple of weeks ago, and I notice a dragonfly, a big one, zipping back and forth overhead in that typical dragonfly pattern: swoop, hover, dash, hover, drift, dash-and-twist, hover, drift, swoop…
Then it comes in close, and settles on the ridge at the top of the rear window of the car next to me. Sits there, twitching its wings, glinting its iridescent glint, just catching a five-mile-per-hour ride on the car.
Then takes off again. Dash, swoop, hover, swoop. Through the sun’s backlight, I can see it’s blasting through clouds of smaller insects.
And then it drops back down and settles onto the same car, in the same place. Resting, cleaning, munching, whatever it’s doing.
Repeat again. But then traffic began to pick up, and I lost sight of it.
I guess the one you’d be happiest to spend time on a desert island with. I dunno; feel free to give qualified answers for favourites in multiple categories if you like.
Damn! I HATE it when I laugh so hard wine shoots out through my nose. It’s bad for the keyboard on the laptop.
So, we all know that pillbugs are crustaceans, not insects, right? We’ve been warping the rules here, and I just wanted to make sure.
Dog Day Cicadas. My sisters and I always called them the “back to school” bugs, because when that WEEEooo-WEEEooo-WEEEooo started, summer was on the wane.
Katydids, which, by the way, **gigi,**we called gigis, because of that distinctive call: GEEgee, GEEgee. GEEgee gee gee.
Fireflies, dragonflies. YES!
And one in the bad/good category…the amazing leaf-cutter bees. AACK! Look what they’re doing to the foliage on my roses. But on the other hand, how cool is it to watch them chomp those holes? Looks like someone took a paper punch to the leaves!