[PHOTOS TAKEN: MARCH 31ST, 2024 | Image IDs: Four photos of a black and yellow male eastern carpenter bee with translucent wings feeding from and pollinating the white and pink flowers of an apple tree /End IDs.]
[VIDEO TAKEN: SEPTEMBER 15TH, 2023 | Video ID: A video of a black, yellow, white, and red lubber grasshopper on a piece of paper, wriggling its abdomen and opening and closing the dorsal and ventral valves of its ovipositor in a way that makes it look as if the back half of the animal is its own snapping creature /End IDs.]
Encountered this grasshopper and scooped it up with a letter! Which is about when I noticed it exhibiting this fascinating behavior! It's freaky but very interesting!
The Philadelphia water department is studying how best to raise freshwater mussels. Why? So they can raise an absolute shit ton and put them in our rivers. Freshwater mussels are incredibly important for filtering excess nutrients and particulates from water. By deploying a million mussels a year the water department hopes to use these critters to improve our city’s water quality! Right now they raise about 10,000 mussels a year and hope to scale up to a million a year soon!
Edit: These are native species of mussels that belong here!