I have enrolled for an ant walk by ecoedu . I have attended a walk few years ago, so thought this will be a good refresher and my son might enjoy it. We ended up reaching late as we were stuck in bad traffic at Koramangala. Anyways, as soon as we reached we joined the walk. My friend Shalini too brought her daughter along. The unusually warm winter was gone and thanks to the positive Indian Dipole weakening, proper winter has set in Bangalore. The cold mornings returned and a cold wind made the kids shiver in the morning at lalbgah
My son found another friend from his school and Shalini's daughter too joined them and three of them separated from the group and started their own exploration. So my plans of listening to the walk took back seat as I ended up taking care of them.
There were very interesting things happening on the bark of the trees. Multiple trees have wasp-infested caterpillars taking care of clutch of wasp cocoons.
You can notice the white cocoons of the wasp being guarded by the caterpillar. Wasps have an amazing capability of altering their hosts brain. A wasp would have laid eggs directly into the body of the caterpillar and the young one's after eating insides of the caterpillar would have emerged out of it without killing. Once emerged, they pupate by forming cocoons and the caterpillar wind would be altered by a chemicals generated by the wasp babies that makes it guard the cocoons of wasp and eventually dies while the babies of the wasp emerge and go around to continue the cycle.
Though it looks gory from a human perspective, it's nature's way of keeping population of insects under control. I admire wasp on how they evolved such chemical strategies over millions of years.
Besides the spiders and bark mantis, we also saw a moth that mesmerized me few days back in Haralur lake walk that I wrote about
This time, I got an opportunity to photograph it from a side view. It's such a small moth with a nice mimicry/defence strategy.
Besides, I was also able to photograph a Broad-headed bug which was id-ed on inaturalist as Riptortus pedestris which I learnt is a pest for soy bean
We wrapped up a day where kids had more fun. They explored and showed us some ants, spiders and we went home satisfied with new sightings.
My son found another friend from his school and Shalini's daughter too joined them and three of them separated from the group and started their own exploration. So my plans of listening to the walk took back seat as I ended up taking care of them.
There were very interesting things happening on the bark of the trees. Multiple trees have wasp-infested caterpillars taking care of clutch of wasp cocoons.
You can notice the white cocoons of the wasp being guarded by the caterpillar. Wasps have an amazing capability of altering their hosts brain. A wasp would have laid eggs directly into the body of the caterpillar and the young one's after eating insides of the caterpillar would have emerged out of it without killing. Once emerged, they pupate by forming cocoons and the caterpillar wind would be altered by a chemicals generated by the wasp babies that makes it guard the cocoons of wasp and eventually dies while the babies of the wasp emerge and go around to continue the cycle.
Though it looks gory from a human perspective, it's nature's way of keeping population of insects under control. I admire wasp on how they evolved such chemical strategies over millions of years.
Besides the spiders and bark mantis, we also saw a moth that mesmerized me few days back in Haralur lake walk that I wrote about
This time, I got an opportunity to photograph it from a side view. It's such a small moth with a nice mimicry/defence strategy.
Besides, I was also able to photograph a Broad-headed bug which was id-ed on inaturalist as Riptortus pedestris which I learnt is a pest for soy bean
We wrapped up a day where kids had more fun. They explored and showed us some ants, spiders and we went home satisfied with new sightings.
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