Man is big, and this is not a compliment. I’m referring to his very body size. This is the main reason why we feel so close to animals like lions, elephants, dogs and so on… they’re big too, so we don’t get stressed trying to see them. But the most part of the planet’s life is small, always around us but not so visible, yet very interesting and unique.
A small portion of a grass…. or even a single leaf, can tell us a story of life and death like the ones we could see in one of the thousand lions documentaries around here. We need just to be a little bit more aware of what we’ve around and to have the good idea to lay down and observe.
In Peru a friend turned upside down a large leaved plant, finding and photographing together with me a spectacular and dramatic event. The bugs of the family Membracidae are parasites of many plants around the world. The ones here are protective mothers, that defend their eggs against predators until they’ll hatch. The young nymphs will be then protected by their tiny spines and their large number, that decreases the probability of each nymph to be predated.
Suddenly, something black and rounded entered my eyesight. It was another protagonist of this small world, another bug, but this time it was a nymph of an assassin bug (Reduviidae). Shaped like a small beetle, it crawled on the leaf, with nonchalance it run around a bit and then began to prey upon the bug nymphs. We focused our lenses on this small size tragedy, that ended with some dead young and the assassin bug going away with a nymph still impaled on its long rostrum.
I was so excited to see such actions is such small area! What else nature is reserving to me for the future? I had my habitat, my “herbivores” and a real predator all in one area big less than a laptop pc.
