Unexpected visitor from the wetlands

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rjlittlefield
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Unexpected visitor from the wetlands

Post by rjlittlefield »

'Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house,
just one creature was stirring -- this small waterlouse!

Image

I exaggerate, of course. I thought there was just the one, but when I photographed it in situ, I was surprised to discover a small congregation of them!

Image

I had never noticed these critters before this week. One turned up in the top of a jarful of decaying leaves that I scooped out of a drainage ditch to get some protozoa. At first I thought it was a dead woodlouse. Then I discovered it lived under the water. After a while another one appeared. Now it seems there are quite a few of them in that jar -- they're just a bit hard to see!

One of my most beloved reference books[*][/size] identifies these beasts as waterlice, family Asellidae. It says they are "closely related to the well-known woodlouse or slater which is one of the few truly terrestrial crustaceans. ... Asellus sp may be very abundant in weedy ponds where they climb among the algae and other plants or crawl about on the muddy bottom. The more evil smelling the pond the more abundant the waterlouse seems to be. It is primarily a scavenger feeding on decaying matter and on algae."

Both pictures are with Sigma 105mm macro lens on Canon 300D. The first picture is illuminated with two desk lamps placed in copystand configuration to avoid reflections, with the subject sitting on a piece of black velvet submerged in a bit of clear water in a shallow glass. That one is f/11, 1 second exposure. The second picture is an oblique shot of the half-submerged muck at the top of a pint jar. Reflections off the water surface make it almost impossible to see in by eye. But it got remarkably clear using flash with crossed polarizers (f/22).

I know, I know, there's not much Christmas spirit in these pictures, but sometimes I get distracted. It was a pleasant break from the equally pleasant pastime of wrapping presents. :lol:

Merry Christmas, everybody! :D :D

--Rik

PS. The head is the narrow end with the thin antennae, not the broad end with the fancy markings. At least that's the way it seems to be, judging from how they move. :?

[*] The Pond", Gerald Thompson et.al., 1984, Oxford Scientific Films.

Ken Ramos
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Post by Ken Ramos »

Some pretty wild looking lice there Rik. I will have to keep a look out for them. I too have noticed that the worse it smells the better it is for water critters in some cases, depends on what one is after I suppose. :-k

beetleman
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Post by beetleman »

Really nice looking shots Rik and some very interesting information on them also. They are not that little are they. :shock: I spent a lot of time at ponds as a kid and I do not remember ever seeing them :wink:
Take Nothing but Pictures--Leave Nothing but Footprints.
Doug Breda

rjlittlefield
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Post by rjlittlefield »

Doug,

This was a medium-sized specimen. The biggest one that I've seen in the jar is close to 15 mm long.

I did a bit more poking around for information on these beasts. The effort was not very successful. I was hoping to find something like "Life In The Muck -- Memoirs Of A Water-Louse". But pretty much all I could find were distribution maps and very brief summaries.

One page did look pretty interesting, but it was in Russian (http://www.floranimal.ru/families/6981.html). Google offered to translate for me. Eager to see what would happen, I said "Sure!"

Part of what popped out was perhaps the most hilarious scramble I have ever seen: "Significant the Asia donkeys water available."

That one took a bit of investigation! The original page says "На значительном протяжении Азии водяные ослики отсутствуют." Various translators other than Google produced equally bizarre translations in which "burros" was a prominent word.

Finally worldlingo.com came up with something that at least makes sense: "Water [osliki] be absent for the significant elongation of Asia."

So I'm thinking that what the page actually says is something like "Water-lice are not found across most of Asia."

Do we have a Russian speaker who can tell me for sure??

--Rik

MacroLuv
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Post by MacroLuv »

Hi folks! :D
Very interesting critters, Rik. Well, I know to read Cyrillic alphabet. I've been learning Russian as one of the foregin languages but long ago in the primary school (grammar / high school - english only). Back in 9th century AD Slavic peoples shared common Glagolitic alphabet. I'm offering you those links if you have some interest in history. :wink:
Turning back to the point... I can understand "На значительном протяжении Азии водяные ослики отсутствуют." without need to even translate because words are similar. But you must be careful with similar languages. Some equally looking words could have a very different meanings. 8) Although I understand meaning of this sentence it is equally "tricky" for me to translate it to croatian as well to english. :lol:
Lets make some try:
Ru - Cro - Eng

На - na - on
значительном - značajnom - noticeable, considerable, big, significant
протяжении - području, prostor - region, territory, zone, extent
Азии - Azije - Asia (of course) :D
водяные - vodene - aquatic
ослики - uši - lice, louse, nit
отсутствуют - nedostaju, odsutne - not present, absent, missing

One possible variation:

Aquatic lice are absent from the significant extent of Asia.

Sorry again for bad english.
More confused now? :lol:

By the way, just now, after googling I found some possibly helpful links:

English-Russian and Russian-English online dictionary

English-Croatian and Croatian-English online dictionary

For those curious in Slavic folklore here is a link to Slavic mythology.

Slavic mythology

Major Gods
Dazbog - (giving god, god-giver, god-donor, deus dator) • Jarilo - (Jarilo (Juraj, Jura) became identified with St. George after the arrival of Christianity, possibly because of mild similarities in their names, but more likely because St. George is usually shown as a knight on a horse slaying a dragon, whilst the Slavs believed Jarilo to have an equine appearance, and that for a time he lived in the green underworld with his step-father Veles, imagined to be a serpent-like or dragon-like deity. Another possibility is the fact that some legends of St. George depict him being killed and resurrected several times over.) • Morana - (Goddess of winter as well as death. Her name is based on the Slavic root mor, used in words such as "confusion", "peril", "nightmare" and "death".) • Perun - (Perun in a number of Slavic languages today simply means "thunder" or "lightning bolt". Perun is strongly correlated with the near-identical Perkūnas/Perkons from Baltic mythology, suggesting the existence of an ancestral Balto-Slavic deity, which ultimately derives from the Proto-Indo European thunder god whose original name has been reconstructed as Perkwunos. The root *perkwu originally probably meant oak, but in Proto-Slavic this evolved into per- meaning "to strike, to slay".
... Te izvadi tri jabuke zlatne
I baci ih nebu u visine...
...Tri munje od neba pukoše
Jedna gađa dva djevera mlada,
Druga gađa pašu na dorinu,
Treća gađa svata šest stotina,
Ne uteče oka za svjedoka,
Ni da kaže, kako pogiboše.


"...Then he took out three apples of gold
And threw them high into the sky...
...Three lightning bolts burst from the sky,
One strikes at two young brothers-in-law,
Another strikes at pasha on a horse,
The third strikes six hundred wedding guests,
Not an eye for a witness fled
Not even to say, how they ended dead."


It is conjectured that mythical golden apples of Perun were symbols of a rare but notorious form of atmospheric discharge, ball lightning. The same is probably true for the thunder marks of East Slavic folklore, of which two examples are shown above.) • Siwa - (Her name means "living, being, existing." Sieba is married to Siebog, her male equivalent.) • Svantevit - (Associated with war and divination. Described as a four-headed god with two heads looking front and two back. A statue portraying the god shows him with four heads, each one looking in a separate direction, a symbolical representation of the four diections of the compass, and also perhaps the four seasons of the year. Some interpretations claim that Svetovit was another name for Radegast or Belobog, while another states that Svetovit was a fake god, a Wendish construction based on the name St. Vitus. However common practice of Christian Church was to replace existing pagan deities and places of worship with analogous persons and rituals of christian content, so it seems more likely that Saint-Vitus was made to replace the original Svanto-Vit.) • Svarog/Svarogich - (God sun and spirit of fire; his name means bright and clear. In neo-paganist religions, Svarog is often the supreme god-creator and the central part of the (holy) trinity Triglav. He completed the creation of the world by giving it Prav. Svarog is associated in Christianity with Saints Cosmas and Damian, and Saint Michael the Archangel. His animals are a golden horned ox, a boar, a horse, and a falcon named Varagna.) • Triglav - (Triglav (lit. 'three headed') also sometimes called troglav is a god or complex of gods in Slavic mythology, similar in nature to the Trinity in Christianity or Trimurti in Hinduism. Often, he is considered to be the same deity as Troyan. Triglav's heads represent sky, earth and the Underworld. Some priests said that Triglav has three heads because he rules all three kingdoms (sky, earth and hell) and has a binding over his eyes so he could not see people's sins. His eyes are said to possess great power (that's why all eyes on his statues are covered). Triglav is also the highest mountain of Slovenia.) • Veles - (Slavic god of earth, waters and the underworld, associated with dragons, cattle, magic, musicians, wealth and trickery. He is also the opponent of thunder-god Perun.) • Zorya - (Zaria or Zoria is the goddess of beauty. A once-popular goddess also associated with the morning, Zaria was known to her worshippers as "the heavenly bride." She was greeted at dawn as "the brightest maiden, pure, sublime, honorable." Zaria (sometimes Zarya) is the Russian word for "Sunrise.")

Other Gods
Belobog - (Belobog, Belbog, Bialbog, Byelobog, Bielobog, Belun, Bylun (all names meaning: White God) is a hypothetical Slavic deity of light and Sun, the counterpart of dark and cursed Crnobog (Black God)) • Berstuk - (Berstuk is the evil god of the forest) • Chernobog - (Chernobog (also spelled Crnobog, Czernobog, Černobog or Zernebog, each name meaning Black God) is a mysterious Slavic deity of whom much has been speculated but little can be said. A veneration of this deity perhaps survived in folklore of several Slavic nations. In some South Slavic vernaculars (Croatia!), there exists an interesting phrase do zla boga (meaning "to [the] evil god," or perhaps "to [the] evil [of] God," which may denote ownership rather than some dark attribute), used as an attribute to express something which is exceedingly negative. No-one is really aware of the literal meaning of these words anymore; exclamations such as Ovo je do zla boga dosadno!, To je do zla boga glupo! can be safely translated as "This is devilishly boring!", "That is immensely stupid!" without any actual loss in meaning.) • Dziewona - (Dziewona (or Dziewanna in Polish, Devana in Czech, Diiwica in Serbian) is the Slavic equivalent of the Roman Goddess Diana. All her names that derive from Slavic language translate to "The Maiden." She is the virginal Goddess who is the huntress of the forest and is associated with the Moon, spring, agriculture and weather.) • Hors - (Hors represents the old sun which, in Slavic mythology, becomes smaller as the days become shorter in the Northern Hemisphere, and dies on Korochun, the winter solstice. It is said to be defeated by the dark and evil powers of Chernobog. On December 23rd Hors is resurrected and becomes the new sun, Koleda. Gods with similar roles in other mythology systems include: Esculap (Hellenic), Asclaepius (Roman), Apis (Egyptian), and Baldur (Scandinavian). • Flins - (Flins is the god of death.) • Karewit - (Karewit is the protector of the town of Korzenica (nowadays Garz) on Rugia. Depicted alone, his naked statue has a head with two faces, an oxen's head on his chest and a rooster's head on his belly. Depicted together with Rugiewit, he has six heads, four male and two female ones. His chest sports a lion's head.) • Lado - (Lada or Lado is a fakeloric Slavic pagan deity of harmony, merriment, youth, love and beauty which almost certainly never existed in the ancient Slavic pantheon. A kind of Slavic Cupid) Lado is also tne name of Croatian famous folklore ensemble • Mat Zemlya - (Mat Zemlya, also Matka Ziemia (literally Mother Earth, various other names are in use as well) is the collective term applied to a number of Slavic deities devoted to plants, growth, birth, creation and patrons of field works.) • Mokosh - (Goddess connected with female activities auch as shearing, spinning and weaving. Wife of Svarog according to some Old Slavic legends, she talked him into creating a life on Earth that would look like him. So, he breathed life into an oak tree from which the first man, named Dubravko, came to life; she created another one, a woman, Ljubljenica. Her statues in temples are in a seated position, as are Svarog's. Her day of the week is Friday. The name is probably connected to mokri "wet", which evokes connections of fertility. It was said that women who made satisfactory offerings would be helped with their laundry, by association with her as a water goddess. This is illustrated by the fact that rainfall is sometimes called Mokosh's milk. In Christian times, she became conflated with the Virgin Mary.) • Oźwiena - (Goddess of echo in the Slavic mythology. She is similar to the Greek goddess Echo. She was also the goddess of fame and glory, being the responsible of the storytelling of the heroes' deeds. When she was at the service of the subterranean god Peklenc, she spred the screams or the damned as a warning to the living ones.) • Perperuna - (Dodola (also spelled Dudulya and Didilya, pronounced: doh-doh-la, doo-doo-lya, or dee-dee-lya) or Perperuna is a being in old Slavic mythology. According to some interpretations, she is the Slavic goddess of rain, and the wife of the supreme god Perun (who is the god of thunder). Slavs believed that when Dodola milks her heavenly cows, the clouds, it rains on earth. Each spring Dodola is said to fly over woods and fields, and spread vernal greenery, decorating the trees with blossoms.) • Porenut • Porewit • Porvata • Radigost • Rod • Rugiewit • Stribog - (Stribog (Strzybog, Стрибог), in the Slavic pantheon, is the god and spirit of the winds, sky and air; he is said to be the ancestor (grandfather) of the winds of the eight directions.) • Zirnitra - (Zirnitra or simply Zir is a black Slavic dragon and the god of sorcery. The image of Zirnitra was employed on a Wendish flag when the Wends fought the invading Saxons. Zirnitra literally means magically empowered. Rosvodiz is a byname of Zirnitra.) • Zlota Baba

Legendary heroes
Alyosha Popovich • Bash Chelik • Burislav • Dobrynya Nikitich • Ilya Muromets • Ivan Tsarevich • Lech, Czech and Rus • Libuše • Marko Kraljevic • Sadko • Solovey-Razboynik

Croatian version of Lech, Czech and Rus story:

In a Croatian version of the legend the entire Slavic tribe had once lived in Croatia, ruled by a prince named Croat who submitted to the Roman Empire. When he dies, he leaves behind three sons Czech, Lech and Mech and one daughter, Vilina. The boys want to shake off the Roman rule, but their sister betrays the plot to the Roman Procurator. When the boys find out about this, they wall her alive in the tower of Krapina Castle, named Vilina tower till this day. Next the brothers turn eastward and, after crossing three rivers, Czech founds the Czech kingdom, Lech the Polish kingdom, and Mech the Russian kingdom.

The Croatian legend associated with a concrete place, Zagorje (Krapina), has two elements of particular interest for us. One is that it identifies Croat, the father of the three boys, as the ancestral prince of the Slavic people; and the second is that the ancestral land was supposed to be Croatia: in other words, only the Czech, the Poles and the Russians had to find a new homeland, not the Croatians. 8) :lol:

Magical creatures and plants
Alkonost • Cikavac • Firebird • Gamayun • Raskovnik • Simargl • Sirin • Zmey

Spirits and demons
Baba Yaga • Bagiennik • Bannik • Bies • Boginki • Bukavac • Domovoi • Drekavac • Karzełek • Kikimora • Koschei • Lady midday • Leshiy • Likho • Polevik • Rusalka • Skrzak • Stuhać • Sudice • Vila • Topielec • Vampir • Vodyanoy
Last edited by MacroLuv on Tue Dec 26, 2006 10:12 am, edited 26 times in total.
The meaning of beauty is in sharing with others.

P.S.
Noticing of my "a" and "the" and other grammar
errors are welcome. :D

Kite
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Location: North-East England

Post by Kite »

these can grow quite large, I have seen one at least 25mm long :O

I was soaking a big clump of moss in a tray of pond water, and just diving in with my hands when AHHHH a large one of those swam out from under the moss, Im nto a squeamish guy but this made me poop myself.
Microscope: Watson Barnett Bactil
Camera: Kodak DX7440 (not SLR, no attachment for the microscope, i just hold it over the lens and pray :()

rjlittlefield
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Post by rjlittlefield »

Nikola,

Thanks for considering the Russian sentence for me.

This phrase still has me puzzled: "...absent from the significant extent of Asia" . It's not a standard English construction, so I'm having to puzzle out what it might mean. Two possibilities have occurred to me.

One of them is the translation I suggested above: "...not found across most of Asia". More formally, this would mean something like "If you divide Asia into 100 compact areas of equal size, the animals will not be found in 80 of them, even in habitat that appears to be suitable." The exact numbers are not important. The key point is that regardless of how large Asia is, most of it does not have water-lice.

The other possibility, which seems a bit odd but I cannot rule it out, would be something like "Asia is a very large place, but even so, water-lice cannot be found in most of its area." This essentially has all the meaning of the previous suggestion, and adds to it the element that Asia is big, and therefore the absence of water-lice is more surprising and worth pointing out.

Does this distinction make sense? Can you clarify which meaning the Russian author probably intended, or provide a third?

Thanks!
--Rik

PS. Perhaps I read too quickly, but I missed seeing any connection between Slavic mythology and anything earlier in this topic. Can you explain the connection?

MacroLuv
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Joined: Mon Aug 28, 2006 2:36 pm
Location: Croatia

Post by MacroLuv »

Author is telling us about worldwide distribution of family Asellidae.
Europe - Asellus aquaticus - non salty and non flowing water - most of the Europe except Iberian Peninsula ( "исключая Пиренейский полуостров")
Caucasus - A. monticola
North Japan and north China "северную Японию и северный Китай" - A. hilgendorfi
... etc
So I think your suggestion: "На значительном протяжении Азии водяные ослики отсутствуют." = "...not found across most of Asia" do match quite well but it is related only to Asellus aquaticus (водяной ослик) not to similar species in Asellidae family (not to water-lice in general!). - "водяной ослик" - Asellidae family and "водяной ослик" - Asellus aquaticus are two different things. The whole family and one particular species are sharing the same name - "водяной ослик". See the title: Семейство ОСЛИКИ ВОДЯНЫЕ (Asellidae) (Семейство = Family). But I think you already know it. :D
Hope I'm satisfying your inquisitive mind. :D
Is it a third possibility? :wink:
Does it make any help? :D


Season greetings + season holidays + season rituals + Slavic languages === associate===> Slavic mythology :D
The meaning of beauty is in sharing with others.

P.S.
Noticing of my "a" and "the" and other grammar
errors are welcome. :D

rjlittlefield
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Post by rjlittlefield »

Nikola,

Thank you for the very clear and detailed explanation. You give me too much credit -- I had not considered that водяные ослики might mean the whole family at one place but a particular species at another. My Russian is not nearly good enough to tease that out of the text, even given a comprehensive dictionary and unlimited time. I'm not sure I ever had enough, and 35 years since college has been plenty of time to forget most of it!

--Rik

MacroLuv
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Joined: Mon Aug 28, 2006 2:36 pm
Location: Croatia

Post by MacroLuv »

You are welcome Rik! I didn't figure out at first what's puzzling you. :D
The meaning of beauty is in sharing with others.

P.S.
Noticing of my "a" and "the" and other grammar
errors are welcome. :D

Mike B in OKlahoma
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Joined: Fri Aug 04, 2006 10:32 pm
Location: Oklahoma City

Post by Mike B in OKlahoma »

rjlittlefield wrote: Part of what popped out was perhaps the most hilarious scramble I have ever seen: "Significant the Asia donkeys water available."

That one took a bit of investigation! The original page says "На значительном протяжении Азии водяные ослики отсутствуют." Various translators other than Google produced equally bizarre translations in which "burros" was a prominent word.
Remember, "The wine is acceptable but the meat is bad."

:D









(for those who never ran across the story, allegedly the above was the result when one of the early machine translation programs was asked to translate "The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak" from English into a foreign language (I forget which) and then back into English. I suspect it's not true, but it's such a good story it ought to be!).
Mike Broderick
Oklahoma City, OK, USA

Constructive critiques of my pictures, and reposts in this forum for purposes of critique are welcome

"I must obey the inscrutable exhortations of my soul....My mandate includes weird bugs."
--Calvin

Mike B in OKlahoma
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Re: Unexpected visitor from the wetlands

Post by Mike B in OKlahoma »

rjlittlefield wrote: The head is the narrow end with the thin antennae, not the broad end with the fancy markings. At least that's the way it seems to be, judging from how they move. :?
Fairly typical for prey species as a way to slightly discombobulate predators....If they can be deceived as which end is up front, they might "lead" their prey wrong when they strike because they expect the prey to move in the opposite direction, or at least may grab the more expendable hind end rather than the critical front end where mouth and sensors are.
Mike Broderick
Oklahoma City, OK, USA

Constructive critiques of my pictures, and reposts in this forum for purposes of critique are welcome

"I must obey the inscrutable exhortations of my soul....My mandate includes weird bugs."
--Calvin

MacroLuv
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Location: Croatia

Post by MacroLuv »

Mike B in OKlahoma wrote: Remember, "The wine is acceptable but the meat is bad."
:D
(for those who never ran across the story, allegedly the above was the result when one of the early machine translation programs was asked to translate "The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak" from English into a foreign language (I forget which) and then back into English. I suspect it's not true, but it's such a good story it ought to be!).
It could be from English to Croatian. By the way it looks like I was translator! :lol:
Eng: "The wine is acceptable but the meat is bad."
Cro: "Vino je prihvatljivo ali meso je loše"
Eng: "The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak"
Cro: "Duh je voljan ali tijelo je slabo"

duh (soul) => spirit; vino (wine, alcohol drink) => spirit

tijelo (body) => flesh; meso (meat) => flesh
The meaning of beauty is in sharing with others.

P.S.
Noticing of my "a" and "the" and other grammar
errors are welcome. :D

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Post by rjlittlefield »

Another favorite translation story seems especially relevant here.
When the automatic translators were ready for testing, the software guys put in some engineering document they had handy.

English to Russian, Russian to English, and out popped something about a "water goat".

"Water goat?!", said the software guys. "What the heck is a water goat?"

The document was about hydraulic rams.
We were talking about aquatic donkeys, weren't we? :D :lol:

--Rik

(If anyone doesn't know the phrase, a "hydraulic ram" is a device that exerts great force by pushing on a large piston with high pressure fluid.)

MacroLuv
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Location: Croatia

Post by MacroLuv »

Rik, I was lucky to find this link full in English for you about water lice Asellus aquaticus (Crustacea: Isopoda).

:D
Ohhh... no... subscription is needed for full text article. Sorry :cry:

Some more excerpts from publications but maybe still interesting for you.

Imagine water louse big as donkey/goat. :shock: :lol:

At least I know about waterhorse or water horse for sure. (vodenkonj or vodeni konj in Croatian, also Nilski konj). Nilski konj (Hippopotamus amphibius), primjerenije vodenkonj ili vodeni konj... :lol:
The meaning of beauty is in sharing with others.

P.S.
Noticing of my "a" and "the" and other grammar
errors are welcome. :D

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