virilath's photostream

I went on a night safari, hunting insects by torchlight in the grounds of our hotel in Munnar, a hill station in Kerala, India. I found three stick insects in the foliage by the roadside, more than I've found in the wild in the rest of my life! This green one was about two inches long.

Just up the road from the Sagara Beach Resort in Kerala, India, on a vacant plot of land with a few scattered bushes, I found a rather drab looking brown leaf hopper. It was quite large, though, with an interesting shape. When I started taking photographs of it I suddenly noticed this splendid version of what looked like the same species. I hadn't noticed it at first, as you can see its green and red colours natched those of the bush that it inhabited. A male, perhaps?

There weren't many insects in the grounds of the Sagara Beach Resort in Kerala, India (maybe, like many hotels, they spray the grounds to keep them away), so I walked a little way up the road and very soon came across a vacant plot of land with a few bushes on it. This had enough hoppers, spiders and moths to keep me amused for an hour or so. It wasn't until I looked at this picture later that I realised that this beautiful, velvety moth had been laying a neat array of eggs!

We stayed at the Sagara Beach Resort and I found this wasp on one of the decorative plants just outide the entrance. It had begun to make a nest - or maybe it had finished making a tiny one.

Some people never throw anything away, but these larvae are the most extreme example I've come across. I didn't know it at the time, but the top photo shows larvae of the tortoise beetle. I found them on a roadside bush in Malaysia. When they moult duting the growth process, they keep the old skin attached on a forked protruberence at the rear end. They then proceed to collect their own faeces on it, using this fecal shield as a defense mechanism against birds (pretty effective, I would imagine). I was so intruigued by these strange creatures that I captured one and kept it, to see what it would develop into. In a few days it stopped moving and hardened into the form in the lower left picture. I kept it watered, hoping that it hadn't died. Then one day, it appeared in the familiar form of a tortoise beetle, lower right.