24 May 2019

It has its mother's eyes. And its father's...



Commonly known as a "water tiger," this four-eyed micro-AT-AT is the larval form of a predaceous diving beetle.

 Via for the colorized scanning EM, whence the quote I used for the title; too bad the critter was wrongly identified there.  A major tip of the blogging hat to reader "unknown," who found the correct attribution for the image.

4 comments:

  1. UnknownMay 24, 2019 at 3:40 PM

    It's actually a diving beetle larva : https://www.sciencephoto.com/media/720763/view/diving-beetle-larva-sem

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. MinnesotastanMay 24, 2019 at 4:01 PM

      Wow. Thank you, unknown. I totally revised the post.

      Delete
  2. AnonymousMay 25, 2019 at 8:30 AM

    it kind of looks like an AT-AT walker from star wars? or maybe the walkers were modeled after these?

    I-)

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  3. Frank WilhoitMay 27, 2019 at 8:07 AM

    Konrad Lorenz (how seldom do we hear that name today?) said that the bite of a Dytiscus larva is one of the most painful things in the natural world.

    ReplyDelete