Finding WILD Invertebrates in Costa Rica!

hey everybody ed and i are in costa rica on vacation and although we're finding a lot of reptiles on this trip we're finding even more invertebrates and really cool invertebrates too so we're going to make a video all about the amazing inverts that we find here on our trip so i guess we're gonna take you along for our inverting inverting we're gonna go inverting i don't know what all we're going to find here near the beach but we're going to look around and just see what shows up some might be a surprise some might be kind of everywhere like we've been seeing already but let's go inverting [Music] [Music] we just found a halloween crab these are in the pet trade where we live and i was not expecting to see one of these in the wild but sure enough i mean they live in central america usually no further than like five miles from the coast which makes sense that we found one here because the beach is right over there this is awesome let's see if i can pick them up you're gonna get pinched he's a sweetheart he wouldn't pinch he's a very polite land crap oh geez he's fast no you can't catch me get him before he goes in okay i'll just hold him here then okay so this is also called just a land crab technically and he's bouncing back and forth there you go it's okay buddy you're fine uh i personally prefer the name halloween crab for them which is what they're known as in captivity in the pet trade anyway oh dude no you're fine you're fine you're fine calm down you're fine oh he's hiding under your shoe okay well i won't talk about them very long but they can grow over a pound when they're an adult four inches than the carapace yeah yep the carapace which is their back part here gets about four inches in diameter they get huge and they eat a lot of fruit so they're actually really easy to take care of in captivity can i can i try one more time to hold you oh there you go see we're friends now it's okay he's so cute oh my gosh look at this little face oh my goodness these are adorable and i can see why they are popular as pets but this little guy is a wild land crab in costa rica so i guess we'll let him go don't they also live like a crazy long life oh yeah we just looked it up actually they live like 13 years we found another crab oh he loves you though he doesn't want to go i don't want to climb off you're super cute oh that hand has a whole flower oh that one is too oh they're going to make a bouquet i must bring my girlfriend this beautiful flower and ask for her and in marriage i'm gonna bring a leaf look there's two now now i have crabs oh wait that came out wrong [Music] you want to explain what you just found we found a huge moth yeah i don't even know what kind of moth that is it would freak me out if it flew at me yeah it might not look like a moth though because it just emerged from its cocoon i don't know where it is but we found it crawling on the ground what they have to do is find a tall safe secure spot to pump all of the fluids from their abdomen here into the wings to really like have them expand and look like moth wings you want to put them on this tree over here yeah let's put them on the tree this is what you're looking for you should have put your cocoon or major cocoon next to a tree i feel well maybe we'll have to check back in on him later tonight yeah later tonight we'll see how he's doing [Music] all right it's been like 40 minutes oh hey jerry you're looking good those wings are coming out nice i still don't know what species of moth this is like maybe giant silk moth or something it's got to be a moth because of those antennae look kind of fuzzy i don't have a spot at all yeah we'll have to wait till the wings fully develop before i can identify it i think we'll check back on you later jerry [Music] oh my gosh look at that huge grasshopper do you think they bite uh go for it it's okay come here come here he's not a very well socialized grasshopper he's not oh perfect but if he lands on you we might be all right yeah wow that's oh that's the biggest grasshopper i've ever seen okay now where's this jumping spider i think uh he scared the jumping spider oh stop jumping we want to see you and admire you oh my gosh you are oh uh he's no longer here where'd he go okay now that we finally caught this little guy big guy this is a giant red-winged grasshopper and they are one of the largest species of insects in the world they get huge this is an adult and uh actually they can grow he's gonna jump don't jump don't do it we don't want to catch you again they can grow about four to six inches long making them a pretty good meal for a bird that were to catch them and so i'm uh you're probably happy that i caught you and not all right hey dude what are you doing you just kind of did an erratic you know figure eight type thing and eventually crashed into ed yeah that worked out well for us great i love you too ben we were having a moment while we were trying to find a good spot to film yeah yeah and here he is so yeah like i was saying they are a huge insect and they're beautiful as adults but in my opinion even prettier when they're juveniles before they reach their final molt into adulthood they're black and yellow and the contrast is just amazing they look like bumble bees mixed with a grasshopper these bright colors as juveniles make them look dangerous because you know bright colors usually means i'm either venomous or poisonous or i just taste bad so you should leave me alone and then as adults when they have more of this cryptic coloration or more of a camouflage into their backgrounds they have actually at this point developed a different defense mechanism they have these huge spines on their back legs as adults that they use to kick their predators away with they're like yeah they're like ninja grasshoppers he did kick us when we were trying to pick him up and it does hurt oh there they are there's those spines wow that is so cool i love this the pattern down his leg too yeah that's really pretty all these little spots yeah he's got like a comb crown yeah this reminds me of an iguana like the spines behind their neck then something say that there's been hunters who have shot them by mistake because they think they're birds yeah people think they're birds or bats when they're flying around but they're just a really big bug they have really pretty red wings as well yeah they really do they're called the giant red winged grasshopper because underneath this outer layer of their wings once it opens up and i don't know how to make them open it up but they have bright red under parts of their wing they are gorgeous in so many ways i kind of want to put them on my face just to show how big he really is go for it okay that's how big they are he's huge all right benjamin here you go thanks for being a good sport now go kick some birds yeah there you go let's see what else we can find [Music] you do know you have a butterfly on you right yeah he wants to hurt he's joining us and now he doesn't want to hurt jeffrey what's up home slice he's getting there i'm starting to doubt if it's a moth though because those don't actually look like fuzzy antenna i don't know a ton about costa rican leopard after identification but i do know that moths have fuzzy antennae and butterflies have very smooth antennae usually with a bulb at the end and moths hold their wings flat against the surface whereas butterflies hold their wings up and behind their body like together so we're gonna have to wait and see i guess what you look like in the end because now you have me confused and i bet people are watching and they're like well obviously it's a this and i i don't know what this is quite yet so we're just gonna give it a little bit more we know snakes we know snakes one thing i'm gonna look for is if it is a butterfly and has big dots near the base of its wing that would be an owl butterfly i do know that one we'll see you later johnny all right i think we have identified this guy as some sort of hawk moth but that's as close as we can get so if anybody knows exactly what species it is we'd love to hear it in the comments now there is another one on this side so i think we're going to set him up on a little date here here you go jessica here's your boyfriend sammy go meet sammy look at them they're like on a date looks like the date's going well she hasn't left him yet he is pooping a lot all right well we'll give them some privacy we found a talisman scorpion just like in harry potter i didn't know they live down here these are also pet invertebrates up where we live think i can pick him up you try come here oh he's crawling up my arm oh look at him it's amazing i always think of harry potter whenever i see these awesome i didn't realize they were from costa rica i had no idea either we won't cover these a whole lot here but the first thing you might notice are these long extensions sticking out of his body on either end and these aren't legs rather they are kind of like a cat's whiskers and that they help him sense and feel his environment around him which helps him navigate at night since they are a nocturnal species so he kind of has one folded up i think he was feeling me up here a little bit then he has the other one off to the side feeling over in that direction he's so cute well there we go a wild tailless whip scorpion enjoy your night we won't use crucio on you [Music] oh look oh cool there's hermit crabs wild hermit crabs ah they're so cute this is one of over i think about 500 species of hermit crab although most of them live in the ocean we're actually just walking along the beach can't see it because it's really dark but only a few species of hermit crabs actually live on land and this is one of them and this is actually one of the types that is a very popular pet actually is the land tournament crab unfortunately most hermit crabs in the pet trade are wild caught because it's very difficult to breed them in captivity it's only been done a couple of times from what i understand so if you get a pet hermit crab chances are you are kind of supporting the wild caught trade so if you're gonna do it make sure you have an amazing setup for them and they are kind of particular too because these little guys breathe using modified gilts and those gills need high humidity levels in order to function properly so that's why you need to maintain a high humidity in their environment they also really like to move so i hear giving them a hamster wheel is good yeah yeah they love crawling on hamster wheels that's right these guys can live quite a while too in the wild i believe it's like seven to ten years they can live but in captivity they can live like 15 to even 20. i think i've even heard of a story of one living to be about 40 years old so these can be really long-lived they actually have two sets of antennae to help them feel around their environments there's that central pair oh and the longer ones are coming out on this guy please don't pinch me thank you and they are omnivores so they say that a healthy human diet is actually a healthy hermit crab diet they'll eat meats and vegetables and fruits and just a variety is good for these little guys they live really close to the shoreline of an ocean because they need shells for their homes unlike other species of crabs that actually develop their own or create their own shells it's part of their body hermit crabs need to live in somebody else's shell like this is not a part of his body he just moved his little twisted soft abdomen into it and as they grow obviously this means they have to choose larger and larger shells to grow into so maybe someday little dude you'll live in this shell um one last thing about them though if you have a pet hermit crab don't buy the painted shells those often have toxic chemicals in the paint instead just go with the natural shells well that was awesome we saw so many inverts here in costa rica i think my favorite was the taylor swift scorpion which one was yours yeah mine was either the grasshopper or the halloween crabs it was cool to see them in their like native habitats that was really cool yeah because we see the halloween crabs in the pet trade all the time so to see them in the wild was amazing that was awesome so thank you everybody for watching this video i hope you enjoyed it let us know what your favorite invert from today's video was in the comments below and thank you as always to our wonderful patreon backers and we'll see you next time you

Channel: Snake Discovery

Views: 489,778

Keywords: costa rica, herping, finding reptiles, invertebrates, huge grasshopper, giant grasshopper, red winged grasshopper, tailless whip scorpion, whip scorpion, scorpion, wild animals, hermit crab, wild hermit crabs, halloween crab, land crab, wild crabs, wild scorpion, wild grasshopper, moth, hawk moth, moth emerging from coccoon, moth pumping wings

Id: DkFCrqvclfs

Length: 12min 30sec (750 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 28 2021