Maternal care

I know I don't always speak well of the shield/stink bug, but today will be an exception! In some groups of shield bugs the female glues the eggs to a plant surface (bark or a leaf) and then rests with her body
over the top of the eggs in a protective man-
ner until they hatch, just as if she thought she was a bird! As the male is absent, the female starves for days as the egg mature and the nymphs hatch. Sometimes the female also remains with nymphs, until they undertake the last moult and become adult (insect version of an italian mama!). One doesn't often associate this type of maternal care to insects, but there you go, nature surprises! I don't know if the sloe bugs (also called hairy shieldbug) on the photo have the maternal instinct, but they agreed to pose for a blip where we can imagine a shieldbug-mama giving good advice to a shall we say 3rd molt nymph (sic) on when and how to use the stink-mecahnism for defense!