Technically these are not insects. Insects have 3 pairs of legs. Arachnids have 4 pairs. These guys have 2. I work with these little guys. that I have to pick them up with an eyelash (mine) glued to a little wooden stick. They are eriophyid mites. Eri-what? They are just tiny mites that eat plants. They are quite interesting actually. Several fun facts about my mites: They are tiny (<1/100 inch or < 0.25 mm), white-to flesh colored, slug-like looking things that crawl around on their four legs that’s located close to their anterior portion or head. Apparently they also don’t have eyes, and only eyespots that detect light. They are also wind dispersed, so when the population is high, they’ll crawl to the tip of the leaf and sort of undulate themselves until they are upright and wave their little legs up in the air… like they don’t care* …waiting for wind ** to take them away. They are so tiny that I can’t tell which ones are female or male. Anyway, here are some of them under the microscope at 20-30x magnification. I wasn’t consistent with the levels of magnification when I drew these***
* actually they do care, but a lot like my life, they have no control over where they go.
** or sometimes me
***then again, when am I consistent?
