The other morning I felt a scratching on the underside of my foot, while I had my coffee. One of these things had crept into the lounge overnight - it was its long antennae that were tickling my toes.
I am homeless now, but still worried the fire wasnt enough to kill it.
True story. Years ago, I was driving with my wife, and I was wearing an oilskin rain hat. I felt a tickle, took the hat off and looked. Dropped the hat on the floor. My wife asked what startled me. I said "let me stop first". Parked the car. She was very worried by now. Said "weta in the hat". She ejected out of her car door like 2001: Space Odyssey airlock scene. Good times.
I get the occasional itch on my head when sitting at my desk at home, only to find a Tree Weta crawling through my hair. It seems that they are not all that appealing to my cats who love catching other insects.
> Young children start off fascinated by those insects, Watts says, "but when they get around 13 years old, something happens and they think [weta] are just horrible."
I admire the battle to save these creatures...it's hard enough to get people on board that cute animals need to be saved. This has to be a real uphill battle.
> "but when they get around 13 years old, something happens and they think [weta] are just horrible."
Yes, that's when puberty hits and they really start caring more about what they think society tells them to consider good or bad, rather than about what their own intuition tells them. It's tied to the development of theory of mind.
Some people grow out of it later, and some are stuck with thinking the social norms they know are the same as absolute truths. They are just interpretive frames, of course.
I base this on Michael J. Parsons five-stage model for aesthetic development from childhood to adulthood (and professional interpretation)[0]. But I think that it applies here, since deciding whether insects are cute or gross is very much an aesthetic judgment.
Here[1] is for example a paper linking the work to theatre:
> In the specific domain of visual art, Michael Parsons has proposed a
developmental framework of aesthetic epistemology that describes how we move through stages or “sets of ideas” when discussing artworks’ subject matter, artists’ expressions, the forms and styles of visual media, and our judgments about each of these concepts. Like epistemologists, he marks the boundary of each stage by cognitive shifts in: 1) our primary mode of inquiry (i.e., perception, interpretation, and evaluation), 2) our expectations about the purposes of art, 3) our primary sources of artistic knowledge, and, 4) our primary criteria for making evaluative claims. Numerous studies in the visual arts have supported his framework with various populations, yet to date no one has offered an analogous epistemological framework for the domain of theatre.
One criticism of Parsons' model is that it's hierarchical in a way that implicitly suggests that later stages are "better" than earlier stages (in typical Western fashion). Then again, it is tied to cognitive development and growing more mature so how could you not end up with a staged one-follows-the-development-of-the-other ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. For a more recent, more elaborate model that is inspired by Parsons' model, see[2].
[0] Michael J. Parsons, How We Understand Art: A Cognitive Developmental Account of Aesthetic Experience (New York: Cambridge U P, 1987).
It's a bit crazy in NZ due to the mamamal invasion, we have ~4000 endangered species and we are only trying to do something about 300-400.
NZ was a weird place where there was virtually no mamamals just mostly birds that didn't have many predators ( other than some giant eagles, where the best response was to stay as still as possible). As a result much of our wildlife have strong scents they use to find each other. Then the rodent mamamals came along and the stinky native species are easy to find, and thir defence is to stay as still as possible. So Carnage ensued.
One of our defences is a poison called 1080, which is a synthentic version of a nartually occuring poison ( Sodium fluoroacetate ). It has a unique property of being very toxic to mamamals and not very toxic to most NZ birds and insects, so ideal for NZs situation. The poison itself is pretty brutal on mamamals. But it has proven very effective. However, there is a kind of "antivax" backlash to the poison and a lot of misinformation which has slowed down the use of 1080. So we are living in a weird state of trying to protect what we can while a vast amount of native species are getting annhilated.
This article about New Zealand's Predator-Free 2050 program was very interesting. Such a large scale project, in terms of time and area.
"The nation wants to eradicate all invasive mammal predators by 2050. Gene-editing technology could help — or it could trigger an ecological disaster of global proportions."
Such a brilliantly weird looking insect. When we were kids we used to love reaching into the wood pile to pull out a weta. Not so keen on the idea anymore!
Kids are weird. I used to look for a horned lizard, give it a tour of my house, and release it if it looked stressed. If it didn't, I'd take it to school in my shirt pocket. A big one in particular seemed happy as a pet and lived permanently in our backyard.
I still find them pretty cool, but I don't think I'd chase another ever. Specially now that I know they shoot blood when scared.
Try it again and rediscover them! Now having kids myself, I've gotten back into the habit just so I can introduce them to these fascinating little creatures.
Back in 1999, I was standing outside gazing at the stars, when I heard this "tick tick tick" sound behind me. Turned around to find this tiny little weta, maybe three centimeters long, jumping around while appearing to look at me.
My father's cats used to capture them by the dozens and bring them inside, usually they'd kill them, but if I could tra pthe weta I'd take it outside and put it near some bushes, so it could get away.
New Zealand has the coolest animals. The first time I saw a huge-ass Kakapo (flightless parrot thing) on the southern island it scared the crap out of me. The pigeons that eat partially fermented berries and get drunk are pretty cool, and the Tui birds with two voice boxes are crazy to hear in the wild! Also, Morepork, just because it is an awesome name for a creature.
I am homeless now, but still worried the fire wasnt enough to kill it.