Category Archives: Animals

Guava Moth

This is a guava moth (Ophiusa disjungens), which hails from south-east Asia and the south Pacific, but has also found a home in Hawaii. This one is a darker variant of the moth which is more often mostly yellow or orange.

Geckos on a railing

When the morning sun hits, gold dust day geckos can often be seen soaking up the early rays to warm themselves for the day’s activities. Half a dozen of them were doing just that on this railing.

Pacific beetle cockroach

When I first saw this bug, with its red back and gold sparkles, I thought for sure it was a beetle. But it turns out, it only resembles a beetle. It is in fact a cockroach, which left me with slightly less warm thoughts about it.

But it turns out that the Pacific beetle cockroach is quite interesting. It’s one of a few that are viviparous, meaning that it gives birth to live offspring. A couple of years ago, this cockroach was in the news because the ‘milk’ it feeds its young is a more complete food than cow’s milk and was being touted as the next superfood. Not that cockroach dairies were about to be set up, but the thought was that the protein crystals in the milk could be reproduced in labs.

This hasn’t happened yet, but who knows. I bet Gwyneth Paltrow is out there, milking cockroaches, even as I post this.

Thanks to Hawai’i Insect Identification for help in identifying the Pacific beetle cockroach. For more information about Hawai’i Insect Identification, go to flickr.com/groups/hawaii-insect-id/pool/.

Gold dust day gecko on a torch ginger

There is no Sunday Stills challenge this week (or next), but the theme was going to be ‘Something Red or Green or Both!’ so I thought I’d go with the photo I had picked out for that anyway.

So here’s a very green (with red markings) gold dust day gecko resting atop a very red torch ginger surrounded by green foliage. It looks like the gecko has been in the wars judging from the rings around its tail, which suggest it has lost it a few times. The most recent regrowth is the lower brown part, which will ultimately take on a matching green color once it’s fully grown.

Passion vine butterfly at rest

I saw this passion vine butterfly resting one windy late-afternoon. It didn’t seem in any rush to head off into the wind again so I got some decent photos. What I like about the photos is that I was close enough to get clear images of the butterfly’s labial palps, the white appendages sticking up on either side of the proboscis. These palps are covered with hairs that are believed to allow the butterfly to sense whether something is edible or not.