INSECTS: Outstanding macro photography

An outstanding collection of macro images, mostly of insects, comes recommended by my friend Bill Jordan the science writer. He's the author of Divorce Among the Gulls, A Cat Named Darwin, and other future epics. He, Robbin and I are owners and fans of muscovy ducks, but that's another story.

The images are reminiscent of the South African master macro photographer Anthony Bannister, who's also known for his wildlife photography. His work on Skaife's African Insect Life was classic. My copy of that book, which I bought while living with Menan du Plessis in Cape Town, is one of my few treasured possessions.

A big part of the wonder and magic of insects is their utterly different body plan. We wear our bones on the inside; they, on the outside. We have our hearts close to the front; they, running just inside their backs (yes, they have multiple hearts). We have our distal CNS running along our backs; they, along their fronts. Our eyes are single and paired; theirs multiple and paired plus a couple of extras. We obtain oxygen via lungs and respiratory pigments; they, via the tracheal system that delivers it directly to their cells. They are so alien that they might as well have evolved on another planet - yet biochemically we are brother and sister. And our finest AI experts and roboticists have yet to come up with anything one thousandth as self-aware as a Drosophila.

The new macro site is called pishmo.com and can be accessed here. It's entirely in Cyrillic so I have no idea what these good people do for a living, if the concept even applies to them. The image hyperlinks directly to the macro page on their site; click on it to visit.

Here's the thing with links like this: By linking directly to an image on their site I'd be stealing their bandwidth, but by copying the image, reducing its size, and posting it on this blog's server (as I did), I might be violating copyright. Assuming the Pishmolians want their macro photography recognized, I wonder which violation they prefer. No need to send the Russian Mafia; a polite email is all that's necessary.