Welp, it’s October, and as the weather gets colder in the Northern hemisphere, Halloween draws closer. In honor of spooky season, what are some organisms with a spooky color scheme, spooky name, or spooky behavior?

Heliophanus lineiventris jumping spiders have white markings on their legs and body that make it look like they’re wearing a skeleton suit on their exoskeleton: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/11145686 Apparently in some regions of the USA mantids are colloquially known as devil’s horses. …

Devil’s urn (also called witches cauldron, and I once saw it releasing its spores and it did look like a simmering witch’s cauldron) https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/8966858 Dead man’s fingers https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/138279882 Witch’s butter. Warlock’s butter, black witc…

When I was a kid rubber and plastic spiders were a lot less accurate. Most had either 3 body parts or had the legs coming out of the abdomen. They are a lot better now.

That first photo is so creepy! I’m usually not bothered by anything but any time I see that species of harvestman I get the heebie jeebies bigtime.

I think they’re beautiful but one could consider bladderworts really creepy. Imagine being a daphnid swimming around seeing chandelier after chandelier of clear chambers containing your acquaintances slowly melting away, much less if you were sucked into one.

I will say it’s pretty damn creepy when you’re on the coast here, if you leave a small glass of tap water sitting for a few days you’ll begin to see tiny wormslike creatures growing in it, wait a week and it looks like something from X-Files. I would have uploaded an observation for this phenomenon…

No, black colored worms. I don’t know many virologists here, so I haven’t confirmed, but they’re mostly likely the cause, or related to one of the species that gives a lot of folks gastrointestinal problems in coastal communities, I usually refer to this as “Atahualpa’s revenge.” All joking aside…

Reminds me tells of when you put a feet in an infested pond, larvae of parasitic worms (cercariae) start fastly swimming to you.

Spooky organisms

Nature Talk

vreinkymov October 24, 2022, 3:56pm 27

Seeing these plastic “lifers” after halloween, where kids drop some of them while trick-or-treating or they fall off decorations that are put away is both frightening since they’re unexpected and disappointing that they aren’t real organisms.

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Spooky organisms

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