Today we took a trip to Cape Tribulation for entomology class to collect insects. We left the school at 8am for the two-hour drive. The drive up was along the coast past Port Douglas all the way north on a road that requires four wheel drive. Once we arrived we had a safety briefing and were then given a tour around the area of the canopy crane. While waiting we were set loose to dig around in the dirt and collect invertebrates. My lab partner, Ella and I found a few crickets and other things that I doubt anyone but an entomologist student would find exciting until we happened upon our first huntsman spider (if you don’t know what that is Google it and you will probably agree with me that it’s something that you are more likely to be running away from than running towards). We chased the medium spider until it ran under a leaf and picked up the leaf and scooped it up. At this point we noticed that this spider we captured was much bigger than the one we were chasing, we then realized that when the small spider ran under the leaf it was captured by a larger huntsman and we now had two spiders for our collection. We also witnessed out professor find what could be a new species of amblypygi.
We had a lunch break and then it was Ella and my turn to go up in the canopy crane. It was one of the coolest experiences I’ve had here. There are two ways a human usually sees the rainforest: from below or from above, but it was an amazing experience to move through all the layers of the canopy. The only thing I can equate the movement to is swimming, because of the three-dimensional movement that was possible. We didn’t catch any special canopy insects but it was so enjoyable we couldn’t really be bothered. After they brought us down we went and sat by the stream while everyone searched for aquatic insects. We all made our way back to the van and I finally caught a grasshopper that small enough that I don’t have to remove its guts.
We then drove up farther north to a boardwalk along the beach to find peppermint stick insects. These are arthropods that hide in the grooves of a pandanus plant and spray a peppermint smelling substance. It was seriously cool to see these insects that had been raved about in both of my biology classes. We stopped back along the drive home to see if we could find any of these insects that weren’t in a national park so that we could collect them, but instead we found crickets that mimic them and I found a walking stick bug. On the drive home we took one more quick break so that our professor could be phoned into a radio show, because he has a show he’s featured on every Sunday, a national radio station I might mention. We made good time coming home and got home at 8:30 instead of 10 so that I was able to enjoy the kabobs, spring rolls and damper bread that my housemates had made. It was a pretty wonderful, if exhausting day.
The view from the canopy crane.
A full grown female peppermint stick insect.
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