The moonwalking insect..

This is one of the most fascinating insects in the world which could be right below your very feet and you may never have seen them! Its the antlion (known a little less politely as 'doodlebugs' by the Americans and "ari-jigoku" or "ant hell" by the Japs).
Here in this video taken by me in Meghalaya, an antlion larvae does its distinctive backward crawl into the sand even if its just a handful.
Antlions belong to the order Neuroptera and the family Myrmeleontidae. The adults are much larger than this puny one in the video. They lie under the ground in their holes with their heads covered completely by sand, waiting for the unsuspecting ant, spider or some other bug to pass by. When it does come along, the unstable sand tunnel collapses and the insect falls straight into the jaws of the waiting Antlion. Its easy to spot their characteristic conical hole openings in the sand.

In the beginning..

To start the first post with such an inane and cliched heading doesnt seem very promising at all, does it?
I'll save you the agony and keep it short. This is just to let you know that this blog is gonna live upto its name - the key word being 'intermittent' !
Simply because I'm not gonna have the luxury that you have of sitting in front of your computer with a loyal broadband firing away. No, this is gonna have my posts from the field (mostly north-east India) and I'll be able to post them only -- yes! you guessed it... "in-ter-mittent-ly"
So you'll just have to live with that.
This blog is primarily a response to people who complain that I don't write enough (what is enough?) and some others who claim that my periodic disappearing acts to the field and drastic changes in physical appearance doesn't help their memories nor my social life. So there..