About

All photo cred here goes to my awesome wife.
Welcome to Freaky Friends Bugs! My name is Mike and I'm a biochemist and unofficial entomologist. I've been collecting and working with insects my whole life and want to share my love for these fascinating critters with everyone. You can often find me swinging a net around, turning over rocks and logs, and/or behind the lens of a camera.

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Ladybugs and metamorphosis

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Many insects undergo what is known as complete metamorphosis, the technical term being  holometabolism . The larvae, or young, of insects that undergo complete metamorphosis are quite different than the adults. A familiar example are caterpillars and butterflies. A butterfly egg hatches into a caterpillar (the larval stage) which spends some time eating and growing. The caterpillar then creates a cocoon and becomes a pupae. It is during this pupal stage that the caterpillar transforms into a butterfly (the adult stage). Ants, bees, wasps, dragonflies, butterflies, flies, and beetles are some examples of insects that undergo complete metamorphosis.  Why complete metamorphosis arose is still a mystery, but entomologists have been able to identify a few of the advantages to undergoing complete metamorphosis. A decrease in competition . In biology, competition refers to an interaction between organisms that results in harm to each organism. For example, lets say the...
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The Green Lynx Spider

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My first encounter with a green lynx spider was last November while visiting my in-laws in the DFW area in Texas. I spent a couple hours walking around Bob Jones Nature Center (which by the way, I definitely recommend visiting if you are ever in the area) looking for bugs to photograph, but I hadn't had much luck. On my way out, I stopped at a bush by the visitor center in a last attempt to find something interesting. I caught a flash of movement which turned out to be a beautiful katydid. After capturing a few shots of the katydid, I realized that my hand was mere inches from a rather large momma spider guarding her egg sac. I personally find spiders much more interesting than katydids so I left the katydid to photograph the spider. Momma spider didn't seem to mind me taking some pictures, but I couldn't resist using a piece of grass to disturb her to get her in a defensive posture. I later learned that green lynx spiders can squirt venom from their fangs towards any wou...
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Is that really a spider bite?

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Have you seen the recent news story about the girl who was bit by a black widow in Massachusetts? If you haven't, you can check it out here or here or here . However, after reading the article, the entire mishap sounds to be a misdiagnosis. I'm not a medical doctor nor a medical entomologist, but black widow bites result in some pretty distinct symptoms. Let me go through the article to explain why I think a black widow was not involved. The first part of the story I have a problem with is the initial diagnosis of a spider bite. As has been previously shown , most diagnosed spider bites are not actually spider bites. There are no tests nor definitive signs to confirm a spider bite (with the exception of latrodectism -envenomation by a black widow-which is possible to diagnose based on the symptoms). My second problem lies with how the injury was determined to have been caused by a black widow in particular. According to the first article I linked to, the do...
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