One of the fun colorful ones

A giant moth with a skull on his back

I knew I should expect a lot of bugs when we moved to Botswana but what caught me off guard was the sheer amount and variety of bugs in this country. It’s truly remarkable.
big dragonfly
First, the bug that kills more humans than any other: the mosquito. The northern parts of Botswana are endemic mosquito regions. During the rainy season (~December - April), the mosquitoes are everywhere. Sitting on our couch in the evening I hear a constant buzzing sound from the dozen or so mosquitoes circling above my head. We light citronella candles, we light the mosquito coils, and we spray ourselves with spray. We take a medication to combat the malaria parasite some of them carry. A bed net protects us and allows us to get some sleep at night, but there always seems to be at least one that gets through and can’t get out. During the day when it’s too hot for most types of mosquitoes you can find them hiding in the closet, the drapes or a dark corner of the house with fifty of their friends.
in the face of a large grasshopper
Centipedes and millipedes, I don’t know if we have both kinds here (there are two types, one small and one very large.) I use the name centipede to describe the smaller type and millipede to distinguish the larger type. The two types seem to be somewhat seasonal. First came the small ones. They are about 3” long and about as thick as a pencil. Then, after it had rained for a while the big ones came. I have seen these get huge! They can grow to almost a foot long and are as round as a quarter. Both of these love to crawl around in our garden. The big ones leave big parallel streaks in the sand everywhere they go from their hundred little feet.
another type of giant grasshoppers
I find dung beetles fascinating for the most part, but I have to admit they are kind of scary when they fly. They can be bigger than golf balls and fly with reckless abandon. They seem to lack the ability to steer in flight and have all but given up on landing without first running into something. I have only actually seen them rolling dung balls a few times.
dung beetle
Mantises, stick bugs and the like are fun to look at but can also be kinds of scary when they take flight because they take no care to what they cling on to when they land. They run quite fast for short distances before they feel the urge to do a small dance before they can run any further, seriously. I always feel accomplished when I find a stick bug (or a chameleon for that matter) because I feel like I have bested them at their ultimate goal in life, to be unseen.
mantis
Ants are everywhere! There are all different kinds of ants from tiny tiny ants you have to get really close to just to realize they are actually ants, to giant flying ants that are about an inch long. They can travel in swarms that appear to have no organization or they can form two lane highways that are so well established they have created deep grooves in the sand. These highways can go for yards and yards with no apparent purpose. I would like to group termites with ants even though I have no idea if they are related at all. Termites are an interesting critter because they are rarely seen but their presence is always known because of their giant homes. We do see termites once in a while when the winged variety swarm and cling to our house but the underground members of the clan seem to stay just that. They love to engulf certain types of dead or dying wood with a sand shell (they must combine the sand with some type of binding agent to make it hard?) then devour the wood until all that is left is the sandy coating. They make their homes in giant mounds which can be huge! I have seen some that are well over 15’ tall. An interesting indigenous knowledge that we have observed is that the mounds seem to hold a high level of nutrients beneficial to people, especially pregnant women. It is amusing to see women chopping at the mounds with rocks to break off a piece of dirt for a snack.
Amanda next to a small termite mound (notice the missing dirt)

even our chameleon friends have ant problems (don’t worry we saved him)

We seem to have two main types of spiders that come into our house. One is what people call the “wall spider.” This kind is incredibly common and can be found in just about every room of every home. They are scary at first because they are relatively large. They are wicked fast, seriously the fastest spiders I have ever encountered. The second main type we have in our area are the much more menacing hairy variety. These ones are longer with half of their legs stretched out in front and the other half reaching to the back. They have large fangs and did I mention they are hairy? We have been told that both of these are harmless to people so that helps a little bit.
the big hairy kind

Bugs are everywhere and can easily push you over the edge at the end of a long, hot, stressful day. I may do a part II to this post another time to cover some other bugs that were left out.

Read More 1 Comment | Posted by Todd William Wright

1 Comment

1. Marcel on September 27, 2018 at 1:37 AM

   Really your post is very informative about FLYING BUGS.I especially appreciated the section on the photograph.
   
   
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