Monday, September 03, 2012

[jules' pics] Humping ladybirds

Actually there is another mountain picture. It seems that a number of insecty things fly to the mountain peaks especially to mate. Nice location for a sex-holiday I suppose. The swallowtail butterflies seemed to be at it on one peak, and on another a swarm of massive ladybirds (~1cm) were doing their thing.
DSC02286.jpg

P.S. This is it, I reckon. Looks like the dramatic colour pattern is just one of several possibilities.

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Posted By Blogger to jules' pics at 9/03/2012 01:25:00 PM

2 comments:

andrewt said...

Its called hill-topping http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hill-topping_%28biology%29
although I didn't know ladybirds did it.

James Annan said...

Wow. I didn't believe it was a genuine phenomenon! This pair were on the post marking the summit of Japan's 4th highest mountain (Ainodake), so had earned their reward.