Celebration! It took me 5 years to collect 100 stories about and around 100 different animals. Each story started with an encounter in the wild, and a photo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It usually took me a good while to find a story, and to do my research on it. Surprisingly often I learned historical facts about the life of famous zoologist from the past. Vendettas, fatal journeys, poor handwriting, pen pals. Many original descriptions of species are a hundred or more years old, and luckily many are available online. It’s fun to read!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I found a lot of uncertainty when it comes to the classification of animals, and plenty of common name confusion. There are still so many new species to discover, or to reclassify. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And since I like numbers, here’s a ranking of the classes of animals I wrote about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Out of 100 species, insects form the largest group of picmybug animals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
35 insects and 35 stories, thereof 8 butterflies and moths, which are seriously not even under my favorite animals. 7 Beetles and 4 bees follow. So far I only wrote about 3 true bugs on picmyinsect, I mean picmybug.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The second largest group of animals I wrote about is the class of arachnids, I wrote about 27 species, for example two species of tarantulas I found in their habitat. I wish there will be many more in the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
3rd place goes to the 16 species of fishes, with 5 shark species included. Since I’m diving a lot, there will be many more to come. For sure Tiger sharks, Whale sharks and Mantas were amongst the most impressive animals I’ve ever seen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Same as on picmybug, in real life insects form with estimated 1 million species the largest class of animals. Arachnids with 100.000 species are number 2, followed by molluscs (85.000 species).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My stories became much longer with the time. The first five stories (a snake, a crab, a bug, a spider, and a lizard) were in average 270 words long, while the last five (three fishes, a turtle, and a beetle) contain on average 727 words.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I usually don’t have favorites, so there’s not the one favorite story I wrote. But I do remember some facts. For example it was quite funny to find the jumping spider that was part of a deadly spider hoax many years ago. Researching what happened to the largest aquarium fish in the world was a challenge. Mautam and Thingtam are still unbelievable events. Kangfuxin, ladybugs in wine, wolbachia, and just recently letters to the pope(s) about turtles. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Picmybug in numbers:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
35 insects (8 butterflies, 7 beetles, 4 bees), 27 arachnids (1 scorpion, 2 tarantulas), 16 fishes (5 sharks, 3 rays), 8 reptiles (3 snakes), 7 molluscs, 2 birds, 3 mammals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There’s much more to come, for example a tasteful bug, a woman in disguise, a painkiller, and something I was looking for many years…<\/p>\n\n\n\n
BTW the image is made with meta Ai. Since Ai is pretty useless for my research, I decided to use it for Instagram to promote this blog… @picmybug<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Celebration! It took me 5 years to collect 100 stories about and around 100 different animals. Each story started with …