This is my favorite little buddy from the Insect Market. A couple of shots:
Some worms struggling to exit what I assume to be cocoons (but if it's a cocoon, why are they still coming out as worms rather than moths or butterflies or some other fun creature?):
These guys are 5 RMB apiece. That's less than a buck. A friend of mine had a couple of these in college. Apparently they never actually grew much larger than 6 or 7 centimeters:
And some smaller turtles for sale. Not sure of the price on these:
Now, the question remains, why is there an entire marketplace where the Chinese can buy insects? One of my flatmates suggested that they are given to other families as good luck. I did see potential buyers for types of insects not pictured above poking and prodding the insects as if to test them out and see if they were good enough to purchase.
Beyond asking why these may be given as gifts, the next question is, what does the recipient do with a monstrously huge grasshopper or cricket?
1 comment:
the insect market? it's your dream! so those worms coming out of the cocoons: we used to have those stuck to our pine trees in ohio, and we'd have to go pull the cocoon thingies off and throw them away so that there wasn't an infestation of whatever they were. either the more vulnerable larvae or pupae wrap themselves up until they can come out as those big hard-shelled guys, or someone lays eggs in the cocoons and leaves them to gestate... or something. i probably got my biology very very wrong there, but... i'm not pretending to be anything more than what i am.
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