Showing posts with label Invertebrates. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Invertebrates. Show all posts

Thursday, 14 June 2012

East African Butterfly families and corrupt, singing caterpillars

Citrus Swallowtail, Papilio demodocus, is very common in Tanzania
We're rarely short of butterflies in Tanzania, but they're a sadly overlooked group. Except, perhaps, when they're swarming by the million as earlier this year most people will, at best, only notice a few in passing. For a hugely diverse group (there are over 18,000 described species), they fall into a relatively small number of readily recognisable families. Unfortunately, all the nice identification books are out of print (and wickedly expensive to buy on ebay!) for East Africa, but there are some resources out there that will help once you've figured out the families. The relationships between the families have recently been the subject of some serious work. It turns out that the family relationship were rather difficult to pin down because they all evolved relatively quickly in the Cretaceous (yes, dinosaur time, 100 - 75 Million Year Ago). But our best guess at the moment sorts them into 4 main groups split into a total of 26ish main family groups, only a few of which are at all diverse. So it's not too hard to get to grips with the main families, and the main change to the traditional taxonomy, if you've been into that, is that the big group Papilionoidea is actually two, rather distantly related groups. I'm going to describe some of the common families here (together with some of my favourite stories about them - yes, including corrupt, singing caterpillars) and hopefully will be able to show how the various families fit together at the end. So, here goes...

Thursday, 31 May 2012

Why do scorpions fluoresce and other such trivia...


Scorpions - everyone's favourite!
I have to admit that I find scorpions a bit creepy. Not only do they have too many legs to begin with, but some of them seem to accelerate from stationary to far too fast in no time at all. And, of course, some of them (a tiny minority, it's true) can be really rather nasty when they're pushed to it. However, despite the slight wariness they inspire in me, I do find them absolutely fascinating creatures. One of the big things that puzzled me about them was their bizarre fluorescence under ultra-violet light. If you've never been it, it's well well finding someone who's got a fluorescent light and taking them to the bush at night. You'll be amazed not only at how the beasties glow, but by quite how many of them there are! In many savanna habitats you'll see them every 3 or 4 metres. Hopefully enough to convince you never to walk in the dark without shoes! Why they should do this has been a mystery to me, but some new research published this year by Gaffin et al (find it here, but you have to pay...) has, perhaps, started to unravel the mystery.

Tuesday, 6 March 2012

Nairobi bugs: WMD or Cancer cure?!

15 times more toxic than cobra venom, you really shouldn't eat a Nairobi beetle!
Nairobi bugs (also known around East Africa as Nairobi Eye, Nairobi Fly, Nairobi beetles, Blister Beetles and a whole range of other names) are not the best loved creatures out here. This year they've come out in greater number than the last few years, presumably thanks to some relatively good rains, and whilst they're not loved, they're certainly fascinating wee beasties. But before we go into the details, let's start with some identification preliminaries.

There are actually at least two species of beetle known as Nairobi bugs around here, but they're so similar that most people won't notice them. Similarly marked relatives of these two are pretty widely distributed across the world, mainly in the tropics, and for now I don't think we need to bother about the precise identification. They're all small (7mm-1cm ish) and well marked with typical warning (aposematic) colours of black and red. In fact, despite the variety of names these are beetles (Coleopterans) of the family Staphylinidae, the rove beetles. If you don't know the Nairobi beetle, you might well know the Devil's Coach-horse and similar species - much larger and all black, but of a similar basic structure. The beetles we're interested in are of the genus Paederus and are carnivorous beetles that live mostly in long grass and anywhere with rotting leaves. And the most interesting things about them, as anyone will tell you, is that whilst they neither bite nor sting, they're still seriously nasty.

Thursday, 1 March 2012

The role of termites in the savanna biome

The ground is crawling with termites! Nr. Tarangire, Now 2011.
Termites are hugely important to the of the savanna biome. We've covered some of their roles here before when we talked about termite mounds and when we covered nutrients and nitrogen in the savanna biome. The numbers of termites in savanna habitats can be quite extraordinary: with over 400/m2 of soil, their biomass can exceed that of mammals in the ecosystem. Such a huge abundance of animals mean that termites, by weight of numbers alone, must have a massive impact on the ecosystem. We've seen how they are crucial for keeping nutrients cycling rapidly in the savanna, how their excavations can change the texture of the soil and how these impacts change the plants and, ultimately, the behaviour of animals within the savanna. Despite this obvious importance, however, there's surprisingly little research on what they actually get up to and where they really are - I guess researchers are generally too busy tracking lions sleeping under a bush than worrying about termites under their feet... It's important though, as processes that cause spatial variation in patterns of nutrients and such-like are increasingly being perceived as vital to the ecosystem as a whole, and if we don't understand the processes that cause variation, it will be much harder to understand what's going on at larger levels. Still, some work is coming out now, and a paper last year caught my eye.

Friday, 10 February 2012

Butterflies moving again...

Well, the initial movement seems to have petered out, with nothing major in Arusha and most other northern Tanzania areas since Sunday. But starting last weekend I started hearing word of movement down on the coast, and then in Kenya, around Nairobi and Mt Kenya areas, all of butterflies headed south. The last couple of days I've been hearing about massive movements - at least as impressive as the original movements over the Pare Mts (around 400/min over a 20m line!) and in much of Kenya (but the Kenyan's haven't yet given me anything specific enough to actually map - come on!). These animals now seem to have arrived more widely in Tanzania, with arrivals in northern Serengeti reported for the first time now, as well as continued movement on the coast. And there are even a few trickling over Ilboru again now - though we're clouding up here and I'm not expecting much. But if you've been following the story, please keep your eyes open and keep reporting. Here's the latest map. Please do encourage your friends and contacts to get involved. (And I'd still love to know what happened around Singida to the original movement!)


View Butterfly eruption 2012 in a larger map

Sunday, 5 February 2012

Notes on a butterfly eruption: a billion and counting!

 Just a brief post with the latest news, as it's coming in. The bulk of the movement seems to have passed Arusha Moshi now - there are still large numbers going through but (a) they've turned South West in most areas, and (b) they're coming through in groups now, not as a continuous stream. By contrast, I'm hearing of increasing numbers now in and around the Crater, with the first being reported (headed south and south west) from the broader Ndutu area. I've also confirmed that the movement hasn't been noted north of the Pare Mountains, suggesting the idea that they originated in the Maasai Steppe and headed north from there might well fit. The other very interesting observation comes from Tent with a View (I think that's their website!), who report 1000s appearing just recently headed south down the coast in Saadani NP. So, if you're in Dar, do look out over the next day or two. How this fits into the pattern, I'm not sure! But keep the records coming and we'll find out.

Meanwhile, I've been reading more papers on butterfly movements in Africa!

Friday, 3 February 2012

Butterfly migration update

Thanks to all who've given me information so far! Numbers are definitly falling now around here, but some big waves are still coming through and that big wave of movement must be headed somewhere else... If you've been following you'll notice that new points have been appearing on the map, though more would be great, so if you've been hesitant, please do let me know. You can either add points yourself here, email or SMS me (if you know my number of course) or add a comment to the blog and I'll update things. I'm just as keen on negative data as positve ones if you're in the area - I'm getting hints that there's nothing moving in southern Tarangire, for instance, but only because I've been asking folk there and they've all been silent! Similarly, I think it's negative all over Serengeti, but I'm struggling for people to tell me that despite sending lots of messages!

Vachellia and Senegallia species in massed flower near Longido, Jan 2012
Some things I've been wondering about that might help us piece things together include information on average flight speeds for butterflies of other species - around 14kmh for Monarchs, butteflies that like a little tail wind. And between 10kmh and 6kmh for a range of other species in still air (higher speeds usually by migrant species, but not specifically recorded on migration). When our African Monarchs are on the move they seem to travel at about the same speed as the whites and they use a following breeze too, so let's assume a similar flight speed. Now I first noticed movements in Arusha on Tuesday, but it could have started sooner. Most movement has been between 10am and 5pm, giving 7 hrs of movement time. And most of the butterflies haven't been stopping much to feed. So let's say each individual has been moving for 7hrs on three days, they should have covered nearly 300km in that time. My most easterly records of the movement on the map (did I say to help me fill it in?!) are from Korogwe on Wednesday, when a notiable movement was headed NW - not as many as elsewhere at that time, but I don't know what it was like there on Tuesday or Monday. So those eastern butterflies are around 300km from me, if they followed the direction of movement we've been recording. If they flew each day, they'd be passing here about now. It's tempting to think the lower numbers at the moment represent the end of a continouos movement from Korogwe to here, whilst the peak that was here should no be about 300km further along, takingus beyond Eyasi and into uncharted territoriy. Anyone know folk in Singida or out that way who might tell us what they've seen?

Wednesday, 1 February 2012

Mapping the butterfly eruption

OK, I got rather a lot of information thanks to the previous post and thought we'd cash in on it as fast as possible - the butterflies are moving again over Ilboru right now, not in large numbers yet, but it's still cool. I think I've created a google map that anyone can edit with their location and observations. It's not a polished item, but I've put what I've discovered in for far and it's already interesting. (If anyone tech-savvy can make it neater I'd love to have icons that reflected the direction and volume of movement, rather than just pins...) If we get lots of observations on this it will definitely make a note for some lepidoptera publication and we'll have pushed back the frontiers of science, which would be great!


View Butterfly eruption 2012 in a larger map

So, instructions....

Butterfly migration out now!

African Caper White Belenois aurota
Beleonis creona African Common White
If you're anywhere near me at the moment and it's not dark, get off your seat and look outside. There is a phenomenal butterfly migration happening in the Arusha area at the moment - from my garden in Ilboru I'm counting around 100-150 white butterflies headed west over a 20m wide patch of sky every minute. Truly spectacular! I'd love to know how widespread the migration goes, so if your on safari and getting this on your mobile, let me know what's happening where you are too. I first noticed the movement yesterday and expect it will keep going for a while yet. The butterflies involved all seem to be the African Caper White B. aurota, though there could easily be some African Common White, Belenois creona (subspecies severina) in there as well. Look carefully for a while and there are one or two of the African Migrant Catopsilia florella a much larger and yellow tinged butterfly. The main difference between the two Belenois is that the male in the Caper White has a bar on the forwing and the Common White just as a spot - but it's not always easy to decide if it's a spot or a proper bar as there's lots of individual variation, so I might have got a few pics confused here. Let me know if you're better at these butterflies than me!

Tuesday, 31 January 2012

A few things you (probably) didn't know about weaver ants

 Ants aren't usually the first things people look at when on safari, but they are fascinating beasts when looked at up close. We briefly featured siafu here once before, but that's not enough for a really important group of invertebrates, and it's time to rectify that. Finding I had some nice pictures of Weaver Ants Oecophylla longinoda (right) I thought they might make a good start as they're not only fairly common in some areas (particularly near the coast), but they're pretty interesting too. In fact, on starting a bit of research I discovered they're even more interesting than I first thought! There are actually two species in this genus, the African species, and a closely related species that occurs across Asia and into Australia. There being (I suspect) rather more myrmecologists in Australia than Africa, a lot of the relevant research comes from there, but it seems highly likely 'our' species do the same, so here are a few things you might not have known about weaver ants before.

Monday, 3 October 2011

Dung Beetles

Continuing the theme of small but rather important pieces of the savannah jigsaw puzzle, I thought I'd write a little about dung beetles. As usual, I'll try and follow my three questions for interpreting wildlife sightings - what is it? What's it doing? And what's it's role in the ecology of the environment?
Scaning for the route?!

So, let me first confess that I've never even identified a single dung beetle to species level. Unless you're a real specialist, I think you can forget it. Our dung beetles are are insects of the order Coleoptera and, as a rather prominent biologist (J.B.S. Haldane) once (may have) said when asked what we can learn about the Creator through studying His works: "He must have an inordinate fondness for beetles". In fact, the latest estimates  - published here in August - of terrestrial biodiversity are around 8.7 million species, of which about 7.8 million are animals (we've only described about 1.7, though). It's estimated that about 80% of all species are insects, and of these about 40% are Coleopteran beetles, which would suggest there are about 2.5 million species of beetles out there. In one tiny corner of the Serengeti plains alone, over 100 species were recorded in a relatively small study. As only a tiny proportion of these are already described I conclude (a) if you want to discover a species new to science, look at beetles, and (b) there are far too many beetles to spend time trying to identify them specifically. Still, most of our dung beetles belong to the Scarabaeidae family, and most people will have heard of Scarabs, especially if they know anything about the ancient Egyptians, who considered them sacred (holy), since it's clear that the world must be kept in motion by a giant dung beetle rolling it about.

So, that's what they are, identified as far as I feel the need. But what are they doing? Well, when we usually notice them they're rolling balls of dung along the track. Why? Because they eat it. Yumm. Most of the ruminants feeding on grass only extact about 50% of the nutrients from their forage, and obviously much less for hind-gut fermenters like elephants, so there's still significant resource left in the dung of these animals. And dung beetles love it for everything - they eat it themselves (some species eat it on site, some under the dung and some roll it off to snack on elsewhere), they roll it off and eat it as part of their courtship procedure (if you find two on the same ball, they might off on honeymoon with a nice snack to keep up their energy...), and they take it away to provision their young. For breeding, often the males dig large holes where they'll store several dung balls, a female laying a single egg on the top of each one (and in some cases coating the balls with a layer of clay that hardens around the dung ball. These broods are, in turn, a favourite food of honey badgers and some mongooses.
Dung beetle nest predated by honeybadger or mongoose, Lake Manyara, July 2010

The really exciting thing about dung beetles (I promise!) is, however, the impact they have on the ecology. First, let's appreciate the task they perform in tidying up dung. Your average zebra produces about 4.1 kg of dung per day, and a Grant's Gazelle about 0.75kg (never let it be said I'm not full of useful facts!), so let's assume about 200,000 zebra and 1.4M wildebeest for Serengeti, and guess that wildebeest, being bigger than Grant's Gazelles do about 2kg per day, and we're looking at a massive 1.3 Million tons of dung per year in Serengeti - nearly 3620 tons per day! It's just as well there's an army of dung beetles out there, just waiting for their meals (as the Australians learnt, when they started cattle ranches and the Australian dung beetles, used to a fine quality product from kangaroos, turned their noses up at the offerings from cows, with a massive fly problem the result - and they had to import African dung beetles to clean the mess up!). And, of course, we all know that dung is a pretty good fertiliser - whilst most of what they bury they also eat, the sheer numbers ensure that huge amounts of nutrient cycling are carried out by these beasts. What's more, they a bt picky about where they dig - it must be moist enough for them to dig, so that's why they're out there rolling balls long distances, looking for somewhere suitable. And as not everywhere is suitable, they tend to concentrate the dung in certain areas, creating a nutrient hotspot. Which, of course, attracts more wildebeest, to produce yet more dung, which is immediately returned locally - a major source of heterogeneity in the Serengeti plains. So, absolutely critical for nutrient cycling in the savannah - in fact, the huge volumes of dung involved alows you to realise that, thanks to dung beetles removal and burying, almost all the soil you walk on in Serengeti must, at one stage not that long ago, have been a dung ball. Lovely thought...

Monday, 8 August 2011

Mating Millipedes

Mating Millipedes, Ushongo Beach, July 2011
Whilst we were down at the beach we enjoyed seeing rather a lot of gian millipedes up to all sorts of things. Several decided it was definitely the mating season and thought's they'd show us some of the interesting things it takes to create a new generation of millipedes. So, here we go with some more wildlife interpretation...

What is it? Well,a giant millipede of some sort - I'm not exactly sure which one, but quite possibly a variety of Epibolus pulchripes, the Giant Red-legged Millipede. If you know better, please do let me know! And what are they doing? Well, that's certianly mating! As you can see, the male starts off by climbing on the back of the female and giving her a good tickling (at least, that's what it looks like). . In fact, he's busy preparing to mate - it's not easy with all those legs and, what's more, he keeps his genetalia in interesting places. In fact, his 7th pair of legs (millipedes have two pairs of legs per body segment, except for the first 7 segments where there's only one) are modified into what we call gonopods - gono, relating to gonad, and pod for leg. But the genitals themselves are in the 3rd segment (some species of millipede have two penises, which seems excessive), so the first thing the male has to do is depost a little package of sperm (the spermatophore) onto his gonopods.

Mating Millipedes, caught int he act.
Then once he's done that and the female is ready, she turns around and they go face to face for the finale (right). He now accesses her genital pores, as they're known (and on the female 3rd segment) and uses his gonopods to push the spermatophore into place. She then stores this sperm to fertilise her eggs, which in these giant species get laid in a nest in the moist soil under the leaf litter. She probably lays several hundred eggs, all fertilised from this one encounter, which in time hatch into baby millipedes, most of which are rather short and have just three pairs of legs, but will moult as they grow, each time adding more segments and more pairs of legs until they're mature.

Saturday, 6 August 2011

Water skaters

Larval Water Strider, Usa River, Aug 2011 They can move like lightening!
Here's a little guy that doesn't get much attention. Just about every pond or stream has them, but have you ever looked closely at what they're doing? These ones were on a stream and just keeping themselves in the sunniest spot, each time a little leaf or twig floated down steam (often provided by my daughter!) they'd wizz off like lightening to check if it was some small invertebrate to eat. On ponds they're not easily fooled - their feet pick up all the vibrations on the surface of the water from struggling insects and immediately know the difference between a still leave and a moving item of prey, but that's obviously not so easy on a flowing stream.

Water Strider, Usa River, Aug 2011

So, let's try the three things I ask about when interpreting wildlife - what is is? That's easy to a certain level, it's a pond/water skater of some description. These insects (check the body structure and 6 legs - the front two are short and used to capture prey, the others are long and used to propel the animal across the surface of the water) are actually true bugs - order Hemiptera. Now, I think these one are probably family Gerridae (maybe even genus Gerris), the typical pond skater (though they usually have a long thin body), and not family Veliidae, but I'm not sure - unless you're an expert the only certain way to ID them seems to involve dissection of the genitalia. Nice (what is it with entomologists and dissecting genitalia?). Still, pond skater or water strider is probably enough for most people anyway, and knowing it's a true bug might be a little bit interesting too. Look at the picture below, however, and you'll see something more - there are no wings, yet true bugs (usually) have wings? In fact, this tells us we're looking at one of the larval forms - just as juvenile grasshoppers don't have functional wings, nor do juvenile Gerrids, which suggests we know something about the age of these little guys too. But even more interestingly, this is a group where in some species developing animals in low population densities never develop wings, but when growing up in higher density populations, the adults do grow wings - a phenomenon known as phenotypic plasticity, when the same genes under different envorinmental conditions (high or low population density) result in different body plans.
Larval water strider, Usa River, Aug 2011

What's it doing? Well, obviously, it's looking for food, but rater remarkably it's doing that by walking on water! How? Well, you probably remember being told that water has a high surface tension - water-molecules rather like to cling to one another. If you're small, that means that it's as though the water has a skin, and by having very long legs that spread it's weight out neatly over the water,  the bug can exploit that skin to stand on the surface aided by one further adaptation - tiny hairs on the legs that are hydrophobic - that repel water. These three things allow the critters to take up their life on the water surface.

And what impact does it have on the ecology of the world it lives in? Well, here I'm not to sure, whilst there's quite a lot fo research into the group, not much has focussed on it's ecology or role inthe ecosystem. Certainly they get eaten by lots of things and eat lots of others (they're also very successful as a group, with over 1700 species), but no-one seems to have speculated aout how the world - or even the pond - would be different without these creatures. There's a project for someone...

Tuesday, 12 July 2011

Dragonflies and ways to interpret wildlife sightings

I saw a beautiful dragonfly at the weekend. I have to say I can't identify it to species - I think it's probably Trithemis stictica, a fairly widespread and common species with a nice English name: the Jaunty Dropwing. If you know better than me (and I am only an ornithologist!), please tell me!

Jaunty Dropwing (I think!), Maji Moto, July 2011
It's pretty obvious why this genus of dragonflies are called dropwings from the picture...

Now, I know very little indeed about dragonflies, but as I had a nice picture to share, I thought it would be worth talking through a few of the things I do know, as an example of how wildlife sightings of any kind can lead to interesting conversations. And, of course, other intvertebrates (that's other than termites) are one of my ten things, of course, so any facts I can dredge up might be worth remembering.

So, what's my strategy for interpreting wildlife sightings? I try and think of three basic questions to ask myself: (1) what is it? (2) What's it doing? And (3) What impact does it have / role does it play on the ecosystem and other plants/animals around? Not all of these will be useful to every sighting, but at least it gives me a framework to start thinking about - and I don't think I'll ever be left with just being able to say "oh, err, it's a dragonfly...". So, given my massive ignorace of dragonflies, how would this work if I'd been out with visitors (as it happened, I was with a friend, so it's a real situation).

Me: "Ah, look, isn't that a lovely dragonfly"
Friend: "Beautiful, what is it?"
Me: "No idea, I'll take a photo and we can look it up later..."
Click, click, click.
Me: "I wish I knew more about dragonflies, they do some pretty amazing things, you know?"
Friend: "Oh?"
Me: "yes,you know there's one around here called the global skimmer that migrates here from India."
Friend: "what?!? That's amazing!"

And so we went on - I'd identified it for him as much as I could at the time (a dragonfly, not too precise, but that's all I knew!) - and I've since discovered a fantastic website that will help you identify your African dragonflies here - if you register you can even send your unidentified picture and get help identifying it. Isn't it great what people do for free! So, now I know what it is (I think - I'll send it to them, and if I'm wrong I'll let you know here!), and I could also have carried on the identification part at the time - it was pretty obviously a male, as I already know that most blue dragonflies have females that are yellow. With other species the identification part can go much further - you can identify how old it is, what role it might be playing in a group (alpha male, etc.). For a dragonfly this wasn't going to go too far.

Then the next question was what's it doing? And it was sitting around (with its wings drooping), then buzzing about hunting. A typical sit and pounce type hunting behaviour. So it was feeding and resting - worth pointing out the strategy it uses for this too - there were other dragonflies I could have pointed out using a much more active search and destroy hunting technique. Given any animal, even one you've not seen before and don't know what it is, you can probably have a pretty good guess at what it's doing, as most animal activities fall into a fairly restricted number of classes: feeding/drinking, mating behaviour (including displays, dominance fights, calls, etc., if not actual copulation which probably doesn't take a guide to interpret...), territorial defence (whih can obviously also be related to mating), resting (in fact, I think that's all those boring lions ever do) and other social behaviour (play, groub bonding, etc.). If you think of these five categories as the main ones (and there are others of course), you can probably have a pretty good guess at what's going on. And by watching a bit more, you might learn something interesting!

In fact, in this case I didn't bother, just jumped straight to my most interesting story aout dragonflies - the global skimmer Pantala flavescens. It's rather scarce in Tanzania, but (as well as there probably being a resident population) it does indeed migrate here from India in November, and back again in May, 3500kms across the open oceans (some obviously rest on the Maldives). Amazingly, we think it often migrates at altitudes over 1000m above the sea, and even over 6000m when crossing mountains, literally skimming on the winds associated with the Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone (that's what gives us our rains). (You an read lots about the migration here). Interestingly, it's migration across the ocean occurs at the same time as a particularly good dragonfly predator is doing exactly the sae - the Amur Falcon. The dragonfly is quite a fat beast, yellow in colour and in the same family as my pretty above, so if you see a golden yellow looking dragonfly, it might be this amazing beast.

Finally, the question is what role does it play in the ecosystem. And you might think that a dragonfly doesn't do very much. But actually they do! Not only do they eat rather a lot of nasty bugs (and they're actually recommended as an efficient means of controlling mosquito numbers - a dragonfly can apparently eat it;s own body weight in bugs in just 30mins!), but they're also eaten by lots of things too - those Amur Falcons, and the two species of Hobby we get around here are major dragonfly predators. And the pygmy kingfisher in the riverine forest post was busy eating them too! But their biggest role in the environment is actually probably not as adults, but during the nymph stage. Now remember the dragonfly lifecycle? Eggs are laid in water, hatch into nymphs, nymphs (or naiads) live in pools for anything from a few months to up to five years, depending on species, and then after heaving themselves up some emergent pool-side vegetation a final moult sees the adult emerge direct from the nymph (no pupal stage for dragonflies). And during that long periods in the pond, dragonfly nymphs are major predators - they can move very quickly indeed (by squirting water out of their anal cavity, rather jet propelled. Good story for kids methinks...) and although they mainly eat invertebrates, they'll catch tadpoles and small fish quite frequently too. Not many invertebrates predate vertebrates, so that's pretty neat. They're actually top predators in many pools, and have massive impacts on the numbers and diversity of animals around pools - especially those nasty mosquitos! So, yes, just like top predators on land, they play a pretty important role in the wetland habitat too.

Hopefully something new and interesting will be in this - and if nothing else you might have a new way of interpreting your own wildlife sightings too. We'll try the technique on other vitual sightings in time, but I've had enough for tonight...