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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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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How bugs eat - Grasshoppers

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Insects tend to be quite small. Even large insects are small when compared to most animals that people are familiar with (dogs, cats, cows, horses, etc.). This makes it kind of difficult to watch how an insect eats. However, it is fascinating to watch how an insect's mouth parts all work together to help it eat. When I was asked to give a bug demonstration to some Cub scouts, I immediately knew that I wanted to show them how an insect eats. It is both cool and gross at the same time, perfect for the age group. I decided to use a grasshopper as an example because 1) it was a great time of year to catch grasshoppers and 2) grasshoppers are on the larger side and it would be easier to film. I went outside, caught a grasshopper, and then brought it inside to film. I usually like to do all my photographing and filming out in a natural setting, but I didn't think I would be able to get a good enough shot for the demonstration. I used some forceps to restrain the grasshopper, set...
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