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Tuesday, July 11, 2006

what kind of animal is this?


yesterday I was going to prepare myself a pasta... never mind the recipe, what happened awakened my naturalist side and sidetracked me...

when I took the pan from the cupboard this tiny beast was in there...
















Now, I have absolutely no idea of what it could be... it did look like a tail-less scorpion, but the big legs are in fact at the back... and from the enlarged piccies you can see that there's antennae at the front... I don't know whether the flurry stuff he's got all over it's natural, or it's put there on purpose... my guess is that it fell down from the wooden flooring of my kitchen cupboards onto the pan...
here's a few enlarged shots...



I spent a few minutes playing wit him and taking pictures, then it dropped on the floor and escaped under my washing machine...

if anybody could tell me what it is, I would be grateful...

2 comments:

Paolo said...

Well, do not worry. Its name is Caramellatus barillae (Granelloptera, Pastivoridae). It is an apterigote insect living only in export Italian food, its stomach can directily digest the cellulose of the pasta packages (like Cerambicidae larvae) and it often covers itself with dust or fragments of muesli or pasta or even dust, depending on what is more abundant in your pantry (in my house it uses garbage).

Unknown said...

you're kidding me...

if it's true, it must have traveled quite a way, since it was not in the shelf where I keep my export pasta.

is it a migratory insect? may be it moved in the lower drawer to escape the torrid heat of belgian summer? who knows?