Insects.

first one is a huge male mahogany jerusalem cricket. After feeding, he hit 6cm!



Here's a younger male:



They strongly prefer lightly moistened sand. You'd think they'd need a firm tamped substrate, but they like to "fluff" it up

Compare the mahoganies above to this immature female S. nigrocapitatus below:



Isnt she a beauty? Lol the incomplete black cap looks like angry eyebrows. At maturity she'll be very striking.



Diabolical ironclad beetle. eats fungi and decomposing oak wood.



Big female Eleodes dentipes -35mm from snout to vent, excluding elytra tip. Believe it, or not, they get far larger.

she's pretty big, still.

Why is that cricket soo damn cute? Lol..

The Jerusalem cricket is interesting. Where is it from? They look unlike any cricket I've seen before. Is it a mimic of an ant or wasp?

@callum: crickets are quite diverse. Have you seen a mole cricket?

Yes there's some funky looking crickets out there. I've just never seen one that looks like that before.

Mole crickets are very strange. Here in the UK you'd have a better chance of finding a needle in a haystack than finding a living mole cricket. Unfortunately they've become an endangered species   

Really? Come to think of it, it has been a while since i saw a mole cricket here also (by a while i meant for the past 8 years). Omg hope they're not extinct yet

Oh i also remembered, there's a fully flying type of insect that looks like a cricket that's about a centimeter long with long legs but not for jumping that is black with a bluish-green hue and stinks a little if gently held.

Crickets are amaaaazing! @__@

The local species native to anaheim, fullerton, and nearby locations, favors habitat with eriogonum (coast buckwheat).

BTW, that 'nigrocapitatus' I posted above was misidentified, I have no idea what it is lol



This is a hybrid between the 'mahogany' species, and the species in the pic above this one. It's hard to take a closeup shot with these, so you cannot make out the dark ornate markings on the thorax and head, but you can see the darker pigment on the legs, making them appear reddish. the mahogany genes are dominant in this specimen, hence the slender build and narrow head.

compare to this hybrid, which is the opposite:



you can make out the 'ornate' markings on the thorax, and the characteristic lines on the head.

Im getting obsessed with these things, I want to travel to other southwest areas and find them. There's an awesome greenish species in arizona i really like..