The Night Tour with Tracie
"The Bug Lady"
Drake Bay, Costa Rica
Discover the hidden treasures of Drake Bay, Costa Rica with Tracie "The Bug Lady" .
Beetles are the largest group of insects, representing a fifth of all living organisms and a fourth of all animals.
The enormous Rhinoceros beetle pictured to the right was encountered clambering through the forest on The Night Tour.
It has been calculated that these insect behemoths are capable of lifting objects up to 850 times their own weight!
Some tropical mantises are known to eat frogs, lizards, mice, and even birds, as well as insects.
The sudden and powerful strike of the praying mantis takes only 50 to 70 milliseconds to complete.
Some 400 years ago, while observing a praying mantis dispatch a cicada, renowned martial artist Wang Lang was inspired to create an entirely new form of kung fu. The mantis style - with its refined hand and arm positions, strikes, and grabs - mimics many of the postures and movements of a hunting mantis.
In the rainforests of Costa Rica, some snakes have evolved into highly specialized predators. Incredibly, there are snakes that eat only snails and slugs, while others that specialize on scorpions!
Chunk-headed snakes are fully adapted to life in the trees. They have a prehensile tail and an uncanny ability to cast their eyes downward. These unique adaptations aid the snake in seeking out sleeping lizards, their primary prey.
Costa Rica boasts over 1,000 species of butterfly. The spectacular Owl butterfly, with it's 13 centimeter wingspan, is among the largest in the world. They inhabit lowland forests and are mainly active at dusk and dawn.
Costa Rica is home to 174 species of amphibians, 44 of which are found nowhere else in the world.
The National Institute of Biodiversity (INBio), which was created to catalogue the biodiversity of Costa Rica, on average identifies a new species every three days, most of which are insects.
There are more species of moth than all the mammals, birds, fish, and reptiles put together!
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