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.

Comments

Post a Comment

We're on Instagram!

Follow us on Facebook!

Check us out on Facebook for more fun facts, pictures, and articles about bugs! We are always posting and sharing content!

Popular posts from this blog

The Green Lynx Spider

Image
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...
Keep reading

Trashline Orb Weavers

Image
A trashline orb weaver found near Dallas, TX. Trashline orb weavers (genus Cyclosa) are quite fascinating little spiders. For starters, their abdomens are somewhat conical rather than rounded like most spiders. Secondly, and this is where they get their name, they line up debris in their webs in a vertical line and then sit somewhere in that line. This behavior is believed to make it harder for birds or other predators to find the spider in the web. A great view of the "trashline" in the web. I found this one up Hobble Creek Canyon in Utah. In the years I've been collecting bugs, I'd collected trashline orb weavers on several occasions. I found them interesting due to the shape of their abdomens, but I'd never bothered to figure out what kind of spider they were. Once I learned what these funny shaped spiders were, I all of a sudden started seeing them everywhere! Awareness of what these spiders were definitely led to an increased ability to find them...
Keep reading

How bugs eat - Grasshoppers

Image
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...
Keep reading