Photographing down the food web (silkworm pic)

[Ecooper]

Back in 1998 a group of scientists published a paper in Science that discussed how humans were “fishing down the food web” by first catching all of the big predatory fish on top of the food web, then smaller and smaller species until we end up targeting the small fish and invertebrates that were originally undesired.

I kind of feel like I’m in a similar situation—I’m in the process of photographing my way down the pet trade food web. The cold wet weather typical of Vancouver at this time of year means I can’t go out and take pictures in the field. So I have started to haunt pet shops looking for interesting small critters to photograph. But cool specimens of creepy-crawlies are pretty few and far between. I’m starting to resort to shooting feeder animals. My blog today was about silkmoths (Bombyx mori).

To be honest, silkworms are pretty neat, and surprisingly photogenic. But pretty soon I’ll be photographing crickets and mealworms. What happens when I run out of feeder critters to photograph?

On the other hand, maybe I could use this as an excuse to buy more critters for my collection...

Cheers,

EC

www.macrocritters.wordpress.com

silkworm close face white bkgrnd copyright ernie cooper 2012_filtered by ernie.cooper, on Flickr

 

[Mëluzynn]

Stunning !

 

[Ckowsky]

Amazing! This is very cool to see!

 

[lancaster1313]

I love it! ^_^

But, I also like my feeders as pets and treat them well. :flowers: They are valuable and interesting to me.

 

[Malakyoma]

Very pretty shot sir.

I love it! ^_^

But, I also like my feeders as pets and treat them well. :flowers: They are valuable and interesting to me.

I also try to treat my feeders with care, since how I treat them is passed on to my mantids. A well cared for mealworm will provide more nutrition to my pets. And I can't deny a certain joy opening my drawer and counting new superworm pupae, or when the first pupa hatched into a beetle that still isnt fully darkened. There's certain joy in raising feeders as well as pets who feed on them.