sippyjug104 Loc: Missouri

This is a Bark Centipede (which is an arthropod and not an insect) that I posed on a piece of rotted wood for a focus stacking session that I collected during my walk in the woods today.

This one is about 1-1/2 inches long so it is a young specimen for they can grow to be quite large for they can live up to five years. The mature males carry their sperm sack and they deposit it on the females eggs where he "loves her and leaves her" for her to guard them.

They are quite nasty and it is best to never handle them for they have specialized front legs referred to as "forciples" that have sharp points and holes that they can exude venom when they pinch their victim...or your hand. They feed on insects and they are excellent hunters and they are faster than the dickens and they pose a challenge to capture. Of course this one's hunting days are over and it now resides with the others in my collection of specimens.

(Download)

Ourspolair

Great capture and rendering as usual. Please keep up the excellent work.

sippyjug104 Loc: Missouri

Thanks ever so much.

HOT Texas Loc: From the Heart of Texas

Excellent Sippy!!!!!

sippyjug104 Loc: Missouri

Thanks a bunch..!

jaymatt Loc: Alexandria, Indiana

merrytexan Loc: georgia

very nice, sippy! love your creative and funny title too.

BushDog Loc: San Antonio, TX

Hey 104,
Do you have any tips on preserving specimens? (I wouldn’t know how to do it with the two-dimension result I’d get.)
Also, any significance to the 104 in your handle?

sippyjug104 Loc: Missouri

Thanks for viewing.

sippyjug104 Loc: Missouri

Ever so happy that you enjoyed seeing it.

sippyjug104 Loc: Missouri

Thanks for asking and I truly enjoy sharing what I can. I preserve my hard bodied insects such as beetles in denatured alcohol (Ethanol). It can be obtained at any hardware store and a quart lasts a long, long time. I store my specimens in empty plastic pill bottles. It does not evaporate a quickly and they preserve well for years.

For soft bodied specimens such as grubs, larvae and caterpillars, place them in scalding water for a few minutes to kill the bacteria in their gut before putting them in the alcohol otherwise they will turn black.

I keep my fuzzy and hairy specimens also in plastic pill bottles that I place a mothball into with them and I keep them in the freezer. The mothball kills any microscopic critters that want to eat on them.

I pin butterflies and moths and I keep them in a cardboard shoe box with a piece of styrofoam in the bottom that I can stick the pin into to arrange them. I keep mothballs in the box with them again to kill and keep out the microscopic critters that eat on them that eventually turn them to dust.

The "104" is from my weekend warrior days where we would make our jug of vodka and lemonade and "sip" from it...hence 'Sippyjug'. The "104" is the number of labels that we peeled off the bottles and stuck on the lake house wall. Thankfully those days are long gone as are perhaps many of my brain cells.

RLSprouse Loc: Encinitas CA (near Sandy Eggo)

Another wonderful stack, Gary! And thanks for the summary of your preservation methods. I learn more each time I read your posts.

~ Russ

sippyjug104 Loc: Missouri

Thanks ever so much for viewing and for the reply. I enjoy sharing what I do and how I do it as much as being behind the camera. I found insects to be a subject that could be photographed year round and during the cold grey days of winter I can take on out of the bottle and stage it for a session.

At times I stage them in a scene more representative to how I found them such as this Bark Centipede. Of course many of them need to be "relaxed" so that their legs can be put in a natural position on the branch, leaf, bark or whatever making a sort of diorama setting.

It is also a fantastic hobby for anyone that may be mobility impaired for the tabletop setup can be used while sitting comfortably in a chair and common items around the home make very interesting subjects when viewed in magnified ways such as slices of an orange, lemon or lime. Cucumber, table salt, rice, tomato with seeds, soap bubbles, oil on water, and on and on.

Dixiegirl Loc: Alabama gulf coast

I'm always surprised by the textures revealed by your photography, Sippy! This is another I thought was "slick" rather than textured. Looks like polished leather.

sippyjug104 Loc: Missouri

Thanks, Donna. The centipedes are quite good at keeping themselves clean. Many other insects not so much so and many others are quite the trash collectors and when I view them they look like "Pigpen" from the Peanuts Comics.