John Walters knows some disgusting insects.....

John Walters is a naturalist, artist and author based in South-West Dartmoor. He's talked to us before and received a great reception, so there was no hesitation in asking him back with a new topic about (mainly) insect life.
As well as observing, painting and photographing nature close up, he seems to have made interesting contributions to insect behavioural research. One example was a sequence showing the way the Potter wasp prepares its materials to the clay chamber for its larva, and then fills it with food for the young hatched insect.
He also held his audience in, at times, appalled fascination as he described the ways in which some species predate others by paralysing them and liquidising their body contents.
We learned that some insects act as what we would regard as good parents - earwigs and Wolf and Nursery Web spiders look after their eggs and hatched young.
There's also some very strange mating behaviour out there. We discovered that Leopard slugs mate at the end of a long thread they exude, with sexual organs emeging from their heads. How very different from one's own home life.
John also illustrated a wide variety of camoflage methods employed by caterpillars, imitating everything from leaves and lichen to bird droppings.
Altogether a very interesting talk, and you can get a flavour of John's activities from his website www.johnwalters.co.uk.