Creepy Crawlies

Home Schooling is awesome! I adore teaching Dylan and allowing him to exhaust me with a million questions about a topic that he's really interested in. (Seriously, thank goodness for the Internet and a great public library at these times!) For science we're focusing on animals for the next few weeks. This past week we studied arthropods in particular. As a part of my lesson plan, I thought that it would be fun for us to look up some "scary" looking bugs which proved to be quite amusing for both of us (and hopefully for you as well since that's what this post is about!). So without further adieu, here's our top three creepiest crawlies:


Here's the Potato Bug. Also known as The Jerusalem Cricket or my favorite, Nino la tierra (Child of the Earth) because it's face is thought to look like that of an infant. It's "song" sounds like someone playing the bongos badly (which we did with relish). It lives primarily underground and only comes out at night to eat dead plant matter. Honestly, could you imagine encountering this large insect in the middle of the night? SCAAARRRY.





Here's our friend the Golden Orb Weaver. This massive missus hails from Australia. The adult female is usually about 6 inches wide (about the size of your face if you're wondering) and has been known to eat birds! Although the bite of this giant arachnid won't kill you, it will make the flesh around the wound die and fall off of your body. SPOOOOOOKY.

Our final crawlie is the African Millipede. Although totally harmless, (note the kid under this guy) just the thought of such a large and multi crawlied myriapod on this boys face makes us shudder and cringe. YIKES!

I hope all of you have a great Halloween this week!