Beautiful insects in my garden

@Lydia I have released it after taking photographs. :crazy_face:

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Ohh Ohh…
Are there enough pictures for its identification?
Can you upload the pictures here?

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These are the images I have. One in the jar. Others in its web.

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@Pritika @Lydia

That’s some good discussion going on.

Just like the expansion of CUBE - Collaboratively Understanding Biology Education.

That’s how, I believe, things should be learnt. She might not have read taxonomical classification in her textbooks, but then why learning should only be limited to text books. Why should someone else framing curriculum decide what we should learn and what we want to learn?
Why should she wait to reach a particular class to learn?

This is the true spirit of CUBE. Hats off to the creator of this learning platform. With a mentor like @Lydia , @Pritika would definitely learn new things, explore new things, learn to follow the scientific principles, reach a conclusion in a logical manner and that’s what education is all about.
Godspeed!

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Yes sir,
We all are learning…
No age restrictions for learning.
A school kid can also learn taxonomy without any difficulty.

When we were having our CUBE summer workshop in the year 2018, we had school kids also joining us in whatever we were doing.
Those kids are very excited in doing all these trapping, catching, fetching for all that interests them!!

I’ll tell about my experience with these kids.
I had some 8th std students along with me for the fruit fly works.
He learned how to trap fruit flies!
It isn’t that difficult when we actually do it.
But outsiders would think…how can we trap fruit flies?

If you ask those 8th std students, they will say
Take a dry plastic bottle, and some banana peels with some cotton plug or anything to close the bottle.
Thats all!
They also know the classification…how do we identify an organism…
When you ask them how will you identify an organism…
They will start from
Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species

So as Sir said, we can learn things without looking at our textbooks…

Very true!!!

Collaborative understanding!!

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So @Pritika
As you have these photos…let’s see if it would help us in identification.

We’ll go step by step…
What say @Pritika
In this way, you will learn the so called “Taxonomical Classification”
This will be a context for your curriculum as well

I’ll start by giving you an example which would make it simpler for you…

This above classification is done for identifying a particular species (Drosophila melanogaster) of a fruit fly…

All these classifications will go step by step…

Which species are you focussing on @Pritika?

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Great archives!
Let us start identifying our Spidey and see where it takes us alongside grabbing some references!

And also, as @Lydia mentioned, it would be like getting a Context, for our Curriculum!
So, for that, we need to start from the basics!
By basics, I mean that classifying our organism right from the start! Starting with the Kingdom of it!

Collaboration is the key here!
Instead of a single brain with 100 Billion Neurons, let’s power up more than 100 Billion Neurons!

What say?
@Lydia @Pritika @singh

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I used Google Lens and there were some suggestions. But I suppose the insect is Batocera rufomaculata. But, a question arises in my mind. According to the information on Wikipedia, it is parasitically infected by Avetianella batocera. That means is it a dangerous one?

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One of the issues that we all face seems to be the quality of photographs. An common person doesn’t have DSLR camera and the the normal mobiles are not capable of taking good pictures in the dark. And most of the enchanting insects come out only after dark.

Sometimes we are afraid of going near the insects.

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@Venkat
Its inspiring to see other enthusiasts take part in the discussion and share their findings.
Good learning.

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Are you sure???

What are the diagnostic features for identifying this Batocera rufomaculata?
Features which you can easily look at and identify it as this species…

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Actually, there are some things I wish to mention. I live in a apartment. We barely have some plants in the pots only. This insect is definitely a beetle with large horns as we can conclude that from the images. I saw it in the balcony and taken a snap of it. This beetle needs a tree. There are no large trees or normal trees in the neighborhood of my place except at second house next house my place. The second house next to my house has large mango tree and the insect that I have taken picture was found on that side in the direction of large mango tree. The insect seems not interested in our place. It moved on the walls and in the direction of mango tree. I am sure that the family that insect belongs to it is Cerambycedia.

And the subfamily will be lamiinae. As I checked some information on 10 subfamilies of Cerambycedia.

And the reason it was on the outside of balcony is because it is accidental invader.

There are like 750 genera belong to lamiinae. So, if I go with like with the information I got with Google Lens, the suggestions I got belong to Batocera. There are around 63
species belong to Batocera and the species that belong to Batocera can be found in North India, Northeast India and East India. But my place belongs to South India. So, I am back to one thing that this insect does not belong to Batocera and this insect belongs to Cerambycedia but not sure about subfamily also now. I have to get some more information.

I suppose now that this insect may be Hoplocerambyx spinnix because the image I found on this below web page reminds me of the one that I have taken. The image and my pic also seems somewhat matching.

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How did you find this out?
I mean, like how did you get to know that this beetle needs a tree??

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Firts of all, there are similarities between the pic I have taken and images.


There are these two sharp-like thing at the mouth in additional to horns. It definitely belongs to Cerambycedia.

The adult species of these family according to this web page mostly do no do feeding and short-lived. But some groups of this family do feed on flowers of trees.
https://cerambycids.com/longicornid/default.asp?a=fs&id=1
And in the radius of 50 metres, there is only one tree which is in second house next to my home and there is this house next to my home also under-construction and there is lot of wood in that house. The construction work stopped like more than couple of months. The beetle I took picture moved in that direction, I means the two houses next to my place, one has wood and other has tree. I assume that larva may have been grown up to adult in the wood next to my home or in that mango tree. Because I don’t is it possible for beetle to be grown up from larva to adult in more than 100 m of radius to my home and it could have traveled from that long distance to be spotted at my home accidentally as they are accidental invaders? But I suppose it moves very short distance from the place where it has grown up and ended up at my home accidentally and tried to return its place ( I mean it the place may be wood or tree). I don’t found data on internet that these species belong to Cerambycedia live on walls or soil like dung beetles. But, this insect needs some place definitely to hide from its predators, for its food or to lay eggs.

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@Lydia @Pritika @Venkat

Found something really interesting for you all!
This insect (looks like a spider) was lurking on a mango in my backyard. Took few pics with my mobile:

If you observe closely you will find that:

  1. The legs on its right side are bigger.
  2. The legs on right side are hairier.
  3. The legs on the right side appear stronger as well.
  4. It resembles a jumper spider but has six legs only.

Is it possible:

  1. That it had lost its legs on the left side and is re-growing them?
    Or
  2. That its just like that only and its a feature of the insect?
    Or
  3. It suffers form some disease (something like polio) that afflicted it?

What do you think?

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Great images @singh sir!!
Really impressive pictures and can see everything in detail…

Such pictures help us in identifying organisms till their species level…

Is this the method that you use to take these pictures @singh sir? :point_up_2:

For answering this question:
We need to first understand or get to know which species this spider like belongs to.
When we get to know which species this spider or this insect belongs to, then we will also get to know whether these below mentioned characteristics do belong to this particular species or not.

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Is this an insect? @singh sir @Pritika

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No these pictures have been shot on a smartphone camera using manual mode.
The ‘Jugaad’ camera can only be used for very close objects.

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Thanks for appreciating my efforts.

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Yes I believe its an insect because it has 6 legs. all the legs seem to be attached to the front portion of the body.
Generally insects have three part body - head , thorax and abdomen.
But this creature here seems to have two part body like a spider. So, either this is a spider with two legs missing/hidden or an insect who is trying to pretend to be a spider.
Spiders are masters when it comes to hiding, but this insect/spider seems to like this particular mango. It never hides nor does it move much. It stays there day and night as if it doesn’t have any natural predators.

Two legs and a wing! The remnants of a successful hunt.:point_down:t6:

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