Earwig, formal portrait

rjlittlefield · Post by **rjlittlefield** » Sun Oct 01, 2006 12:21 am

Nothing special here -- I just always wondered what these guys looked like up close.

I'm a bit puzzled by the mouthparts, but that'll have to wait til tomorrow. It's time for bed...

--Rik
Canon 300D, Olympus 38mm bellows lens at f/4, halogen fiber pingpong ball, stacked at 0.002".

MacroLuv · Post by **MacroLuv** » Sun Oct 01, 2006 1:14 am

Wow! Looks like he was made of honey.

These guys always brings cutlery with themselves.

beetleman · Post by **beetleman** » Sun Oct 01, 2006 4:25 am

Great stacking job Rik. we never pay too much attention to the front of earwigs. They have chewing-type mouthparts and Earwigs are omnivorous, feeding on a wide variety of food. They will eat live or dead insects as well as live or decaying vegetation. About the brain thing...I think it was twilight zone or Outer limits that had that show where the wife had someone put the earwig in her husbands ear but the henchman put it into the wifes boyfriends ear by mistake (she was trying to kill her husband). The boyfriend was in agonizing pain as the earwig tunneled through the brain but somehow exited out the other side.

but at the end of the show, the doctor tells him it was a female that had laid thousands of eggs in his brain

"I never forgot that show"

rjlittlefield · Post by **rjlittlefield** » Mon Oct 02, 2006 6:38 pm

Thanks for the comments, guys!

Doug, what puzzles me about the mouthparts is that when I glanced at one of these critters under my low power stereo 'scope, I thought that what I'd see in this view was an uninterrupted plate over the mandibles, with the various palps sticking out from underneath. Given that assumption, I can't explain what looks like a dark toothed structure on the right. And since I'm, oh, about 3000 miles away from the bug at the moment, it's going to have to remain a mystery for a while. I guess that's OK, though. I thrive on mysteries...

--Rik