May Be of Interest

Froghoppers don't look all that ugly.
Try the Dobson Fly on for size, and even uglier, it's larva the Hellgrammite.

They look ugly sitting on your arm. However, the Dobson Fly and it's larvae look considerably less attractive than the Froghopper.

that's brought back memories. i was taught a lot about insects and wildlife in general at an early age by my grandfather. i've forgotten most of it now, but the bugs i keep hold of in my mind.

i remember those Froghoppers. and the 'Cuckoo-spit' they grow in. start off green and finally come out of the spit brown. i remember those 'Bloodsuckers', too. kids thought it was because they sucked your blood, but obviously it was just due to colouring.

i fucking love bugs. apart from those house spiders. any other spider i'm fine with; them little jumping spiders, money spiders, whatever. but house spiders i hate. along with earwigs.

Devils Coachman! fucking christ, memories!

Hear, hear. I dislike the size of house spiders. I fear that I may one day tread on one as I get up from the settee, or that I may one day find that one has scurried into my slippers, and have crushed the poor blighter and made a mess on my socks with him/her. I find arthropods very interesting, although I can only view them from a distance, as since being a nipper, I have found their vile appearances and creeping way of moving nightmarish.

i'm of the same attitude with house spiders and earwigs; earwigs for their appearance, and house spiders for their seemingly unnatural speed. its odd about the earwigs, though, as i dislike them, and yet i like other bugs incredibly similar to them. like the Devils Coachman i mentioned. and they have a virtually identical body to that of the earwig bastard.

worms and the like i don't care for, and beetles i am fascinated with. along with those silkworm things you find wrapped up in leaves.

one bug that actually pisses me off, or for a pun; BUGS me, is the bloody fruit fly. i despise them with a passion. they're worse than midges and bigger too. so irritating.

I do agree. They drive me fucking mental. You swat, and they come back. I find that if you swat them from behind, you get them, because of the way they see things. Apparantly, they see something coming and move back, and so they move into whatever you are striking them with.

Worms are the only bugs I hate really.
I find most others fascinating. I can't help but laugh when somebody sees a completely harmless beetle or stinkbug crawling around nearby and they throw a fit. Then I come in, scoop it up without a care, and put it outside. Then I'm the hero.

lulz.

The only legless bug I don't mind is the leech. I kept some as pets for a spell. I've been meaning to buy more. There's a website where you can buy them in bulk for cheap and they're sent in the mail in a thermos.

i've actually always thought leeches look cute. same with fishing maggots. i don't know why.

Maggots I don't like. On their own they aren't so bad, it's their association with carrion and trash that irks me.

I laugh when other people are scared of an arthroped. When I was in Thailand, one of my expedition team threw girly fits when he saw, for example, moths. To be fair, it was an army of moths, and one of them was of them was bigger than a fist, but I loved them. Scared to squish them, but not scared to get up close to them. So I agreed to swap hammocks with him that night. I'd have pictures if only I hadn't lost all my pictures. Still don't know how that happened. I never deleted them from my camera, and I'm sure I uploaded them to my computer, but one day I realized they were on neither.

I also had a bit of a crush on this guy, so it was fun doing things like rescuing him from a stick insect that was climbing up his leg.

But then I'm exactly the same with spiders. Garden spiders, house spiders, those ghastly, ghostly ones that seem lighter than air. Also harvestmen and crane flies, which aren't spiders, but my primitive instinct doesn't consider this important. Clearly I have an issue with things with thin, gangly limbs, which would make sense if I didn't have thin, gangly limbs myself.

I feel like I've already told this story on here, but in case I haven't… I recently decided to go into the cellar to check the meter readings. Obviously, this involves spiders. For some reason this hasn't been a problem for me in the past, I've generally been able to focus very hard and crawl down the tiny flight of steps ignoring the creatures on either side of me, but on this occassion I just couldn't hack it. I spent maybe an hour pottering about the house trying to work up the courage. In the end I threw the meter reading book down there as an incentive, and I finally managed it.

Then just as I got back up and out I dropped the book back down again.

I love spiders. They're so peaceful and they keep my house free of pests.

Yummy.

Max, i agree with you on those Harvester things, which i should be used to what with them crawling out of wheat/barley bales, but i dunna like them. same with Crane flies, or Helicopters as i call them.

i think the little jumping spiders you get in England are actually pretty, and garden spiders are my little buddies; they keep those fucking midges/fruit flies out the way.

an 'un-disgusting' jumping spider.

I once had a particularly large giant house spider Tegenaria duellica in my bedroom. I named him Big Eric. He came out every night in search of females (and was very successful, as the later waves of juveniles proved) and scurried around while I slept. Woke me up a couple of times as he rustled plastic bags and knocked things over.

Spiders that you aren't separated by a glass or concrete wall are fine. As soon as it's otherwise, things get creepy.
Earwigs scare the crap out of me and make me want to squish it, but they scare me too much. Good thing they don't live in Denmark though.
Worms are fine enough as long as they aren't enourmous and I don't have to touch them.
I tend to just keep bugs off me, and try to ignore them otherwise. It's the flying ones I can't stand.

Any fly near me gets swatted. Maggots and Slugs aren't nice, but apart from that I'm cool with insects. I think spiders are cute (it's the little shiny eyes), and facinating to watch when they catch something. I occasionally drop a woodlouse onto a spider's web just to see the spider leap over and wrap it up. I've held giant jungle cockraches, casually stroking it while people in the vicinity freak out, and will happily rescue anyone from a bug (though I'm usually saving the bug from them).