Comments

  3. Rip Steakface says

    Maybe the cyanide excretion is what Mr. Akin thought of for “legitimate rape” (what are the tags for Comic Sans?).

  5. Crudely Wrott says

    I’d have guessed centipede.

    I would pick it up. With gloves. Nostrils upwind. Not squeezing too hard so as to be able to put it back down intact.

    I have handled several venomous and poisonous critters without ill effect. What I haven’t learned to deal with are yellow jackets. Bastards are just to fast, not to mention airborne.

    Ain’t life so damned fantastic?

  8. Larry says

    Now if the existence of this bug doesn’t scream for a creator, I don’t know what would. I mean, who else but a crotchety, vindictive, psychopathic god would make something so pink and beautiful, smell like almonds, and yet be so deadly with its built-in chemical warfare factory?

  10. Dick the Damned says

    Larry,

    Now if the existence of this bug doesn’t scream for a creator, I don’t know what would.

    I guess ‘He’ must’ve been exercising ‘His’ feminine side.

    It makes you think – how can anyone believe this bug was created by a deity, rather than for it to have evolved? (Well, i guess the Christer’s Bible Bogey was asshole enough to do it.)

  11. aspidoscelis says

    In the interests of combating the tendency to post cool images with attribution absent or hidden, this one is from Dr. Somsak Panha of the World Wildlife Fund. In this case (unlike the last), it’s just hidden – two links out from this post…

  13. Happiestsadist, opener of the Crack of Doom says

    It looks amazing. And cute. And deadly. <3

    Slightly fierce pink makeup it shall be for me today, then.

  15. efiokmfeokpwe says

    I’m curious about the whole ‘red as a warning” thing… I remember a study done on horses as to what color the fence should be, and the result was that green and brown colors was best, while red was almost invisible to the horse. And maybe this is true to other animals as well? So maybe red isn’t a warning color in nature, but rather a cloaking device?

  16. ChasCPeterson says

    The more I look at this the more I think there are 2 animals here. The frillier millipede’s in the foreground with its head at the top as it looks to be crawling over the (thereby obscured) head of the other, spikier guy, for which I see only one pair of legs per segment, suggesting centipede.

  18. Brownian says

    By the way, that one secretes cyanide in defense

    That may be preferable to what my cat secretes in defense of his presumed territory.

  19. Nightjar says

    Chas and AE,

    I was thinking the same thing, looks like two animals. After googling around a bit I found this. The caption of that picture reads “mating couple, male on top”. Interesting.

  20. cicely says

    Many times, the cats in my dreams are available in day-glo colors, regrettably including neon pink.

    I like the turquoise ones best.

    I have no history of dreaming about somethingpedes in any color—but I bet I will, now.
    –
    Rip Steakface, Comic Sans is achieved thusly:
    <q> Insert Stoopid Here </q>
    –

  21. JohnnieCanuck says

    Somebody needs to tell Steve over at WebEcoist that puce isn’t pink.

    It’s reddish-brown, the colour of a flea.

  26. katkinkate says

    Well I should have looked it up before my previous quote. Its a muted pinkish grey/brown. Almost a pinkish mushroom colour. On the internet you learn something new every day.

  27. Olav says

    Crudely Wrott:

    I’d have guessed centipede.

    Me too. Millipedes are usually thick and round and worm-like in appearance, with (many) short legs.

    I would pick it up. With gloves.

    Not me, not even with gloves. Those things can be fast. They would run up your arm and *into* your sleeve or glove before you know it.

  28. RFW says

    @ #5 Crudely Wrott says:

    What I haven’t learned to deal with are yellow jackets. Bastards are just too fast, not to mention airborne.

    I spent three days this week digging out clumps of grass in an area where I want to plant California poppies for next summer. By hand. With a trowel. On my hands and knees.

    In the middle of the area is a cast iron storm sewer grate — out of which fly yellow jackets who have constructed a nest down below.

    All’s well that ends well: when I had to dig close to the grate, I kept a sharp eye on it and if there was the slightest sign of disturbance or irritation among the YJ’s (a few sentinels buzzing up into the open to check things out), I ceased and desisted until they quieted down. And thus the job was finished without a sting.

    Good thing, too: these days I have some mobility problems that, had I been attacked en masse, would have made it very awkward to rise from the ground and escape in a timely fashion.

    I just wish all yellow jacket nests were in such suitable places, where no one can come on them accidentally. They’re devious sons of bitches and far too often nest where you don’t notice them until they’ve begun stinging your noggin.

    But perhaps better short tempered yellow jackets than cyanide secreting centipedes.

    Now, where’s that great big ol’ fuzzy cat of mine to return me to the proper frame of mind for this thread???

  29. RFW says

    Puce: from the French for flea; the color of a flea, a purplish brown or a brownish purple.

    Many people incorrectly think of it as a sort of vomit green, thanks to the work “puke”.

  30. chakolate says

    Am I the only one who sees a pink millipede (four legs per segment) eating a pink centipede (two legs per segment)?

  31. says

    Sigh.. Once more we fall prey to the modern interpretation of color, and “pinkification” of femininity…

    But, cool bugs.

  33. shoeguy says

    Normally I like the anti-caturday critters, but that one is creepy, even if it is pink. Actually the pink kind of makes it creepier. With so many species of cuttlefish out there, why go anywhere else.

  34. rolfschmidt says

    I assume the “soft, non threatening” thing is tongue in cheek. Everyone who’s watched QI with Stephen Fry knows that pink was the boy colour associated with strength and anger until only 50 years ago.

  35. theophontes (坏蛋) says

    @ Ace of Sevens

    Shynx cat Sphynx cat.

    /pedant

    @ rolfschmidt

    With cowboys (and other manly men), the “male” partner would indicate with a blue handkerchief and the “female” partner with a red handkerchief. (There was a lack of women back them “good ol’ days” out west.) Link here. Whether this became baby blue and baby red pink later is anyone’s guess.

    The dutch indicate the babies sex by serving pink and white “muisjes” at the birth of a girl – boys are blue and white.

  37. StevoR says

    Speaking personally (as opposed to telepathically getting somebody else to say it for me! If only!*) I’d call that red not pink myself.

    * Telepathy if it existed. Hmm… Good thing or horror? Who knows. Minds are strange and unique and messed up things.

  38. StevoR says

    @ 29. RFW :

    Many people incorrectly think of it as a sort of vomit green, thanks to the work “puke”.

    Will never forget the time we were looking at a n aertshow & my Mum – a nurse – noted that colour used was a “bile vomit green”!

  40. birgerjohansson says

    This is a very small hooder from the planet Masada (see the novels by Neal Asher).