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Photographing down the food web (silkworm pics)

Back in 1998 a group of scientists published a paper in Science that discussed how humans were “fishing down the food web” by first catching all of the big predatory fish on top of the food web, then smaller and smaller species until we end up targeting the small fish and invertebrates that were originally undesired.

I kind of feel like I’m in a similar situation—I’m in the process of photographing my way down the pet trade food web. The cold wet weather typical of Vancouver at this time of year means I can’t go out and take pictures in the field. So I have started to haunt pet shops looking for interesting small critters to photograph. But cool specimens of creepy-crawlies are pretty few and far between. I’m starting to resort to shooting feeder animals. My blog today was about silkmoths (Bombyx mori).

To be honest, silkworms are pretty neat, and surprisingly photogenic. But pretty soon I’ll be photographing crickets and mealworms. What happens when I run out of feeder critters to photograph?

On the other hand, maybe I could use this as an excuse to buy more critters for my collection...

Cheers,
EC
www.macrocritters.wordpress.com

silkworm close face white bkgrnd copyright ernie cooper 2012_filtered by ernie.cooper, on Flickr
 
Nice! I once had a silk worm when I was a kid. Wasn't ever allowed the dog thing ;)
 
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