Still sniffling. A hoped-for remedy at Tyrwhitt Road failed to deliver its old impact. It's sad but almost inevitable that establishments such as these become victims of their own success. When the reviews glow, the business grows. Menus are expanded and recipes diluted to serve a casual crowd. And those who hunger for more move on.
A less finicky feeder is this assassin bug, which sports a formicidal fashion sense of ant corpses on its back. The animal is probably a flightless juvenile which uses sticky glue to hold together the bodies on its abdomen. Related species in Africa have been found to benefit from their morbid burden, as the sight and perhaps smell of foul workers apparently discourages attacks by jumping spiders. The backpack of dried chitin is discarded once the nymph enters its final moult to emerge as a nubile hunter equipped to wing it on.
That's so wonderfully macabre.
Just been watching David Attenborough's Life in Cold Blood and was simultaneously transfixed and slightly revolted by the baby caecilians in a feeding frenzy on their mother's skin.
Nature is awesome.
Posted by: Snail | 21 April 2008 at 07:55 PM
Cool! I suppose one could tell how many ants a particular individual has eaten by counting the corpses.
Posted by: Aydin | 24 April 2008 at 10:53 PM