Sep. 6th, 2005

Ana Te Pahu

Sep. 6th, 2005 10:02 am
urbpan: (moai)


This will be a reader-participations Easter Island post, as there are a couple plants to identify. One I know, but won't give away, and one I don't.

There are caves all over Easter Island, due to the lava tubes that formed when the volcanic rock of the island was laid down. In this one, Ana Te Pahu, the entrance is vertical--an open pit leads to long subterranean tunnels. We went into it, but didn't spelunk. The shelter of the walls of the pit allows cultivated plants to grow (like the banana tree in the above picture, emerging next to my father, who decided not to risk the precarious descent into the cave.)

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urbpan: (moai)
I knew from my readings that Easter Island had some cockroaches. While the McLaughlin book says that they have "found a niche," implying later introduction to the island, it's perfectly conceivable that they arrived before any people were there. They could have easily arrived along with the first plant material to float onto the barren volcanic rock. Roaches are most well-known for living alongside people, but they did without human company for 300 million years. But the Rapanui word for the insect is "koka," derived from the Spanish cucaracha, and Spanish wasn't a main influence until the late 19th Century--hinting that the cockroach spread to Easter Island in historic time.

I was a little disappointed when I didn't find any cockroaches in my hotel room. In fact, the only trace of insects in the room was a dead cricket in the bathroom light fixture. Over the course of our time there, I saw flies (lesser house flies and green bottle flies), moths (mostly small white or brown ones), dragonflies (how do you suppose they got there?!), a lacewing that landed on Dale's hat in the middle of a rainstorm on Rano Raraku, a few small beetles and some very small ants. Non-insect bugs included the spiders I've posted about before, millipedes, and at least two kinds of isopods: the pillbug kind, and the non-pillbug kind. The guidebook says there are a hundred species of insects, but I'd love to do a study to find out for sure. I'm sure that the number increases every year, with shipments of produce from Chile and Tahiti arriving by air weekly.

ExpandThree cockroach pictures. )

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