zondag 24 april 2016

Sunday Stamps: Spineless invertebrates

Today's Sunday Stamps theme is 'Spineless invertebrates'.

As the Snail represents Snail Mail and thus is directly connected to stamps, I would think snails would have been pictured often on stamps. Not at all, though! The only snails I could find were the remains of dead sea snails: shells.
Also in this painting (from the stamp sheet of the Rijksmuseum) you can see a living invertebrate, who is using one of the snail's former houses, a crustacean: the hermit crab.



An other crustacean is the crab who lives in the Wadden Sea, a part of North Sea which has been added to the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2009. Six years before the Dutch Post (then named TPG Post) issued two stamp sheets on the Wadden Sea. Besides the sea birds and two seal stamps (one of them showed here, too, as a belated addition to last week's theme!) there is one invertebate pictured, this crab:



An other invertebrate, which looks like a plant but in fact is an animal, is the Sea Anemone. What? Did I say Anemone?



I received this pretty stamp from Taiwan some years ago. I've scanned it in case there would be a suitable opportunity to share it. Today I think to be the right day.
All those years I had thought this animal is a sea anemone. Just now, when I looked up the name 'Gymnodorus Ceylonica' I found out... This amazing creature is... a Sea Snail*!...
(* in English the houseless snail is named 'slug', in Dutch both the house-bearing snail and the slug have the same name: slak)


From sea to land: insects!
Butterflies will be theme of Sunday Stamps of 22nd of May, so for today I choose other insects.
Although many people say 'yuk' to non-butterly insects (as I notice on some Postcrossing accounts), insects are an important part of our earth and life. And when seen from closeby, you can see a lot of amazing beauty!

From Korea come these beetles:



From Taiwan these beetles:



And Royal Mail has issued many insects-on-stamps, among them these beetles, bumble bee and dragonfly:





From Sweden this dragonfly:



See more interesting invertebrates on today's Sunday Stamps blog and the links mentioned under today's blog post.

6 opmerkingen:

  1. Wonderful collection today, Heleen. Lots of underrepresented animals here - particularly the snail.

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  2. I knew you would post some beetles ;)
    And another dragonfly - yay!
    I would have thought that sea slug was an anemone as well.

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  3. The sea snail is so pretty, looks almost like a fancy meringue. I've wondered about Royal Mail's fondness of insects, they make regular appearance, but their variety does make them great stamp subjects.

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  4. Thank you all for your comments!

    And yes, Royal Mail's variety in design is great. An amazing number of beautiful stamps!

    As far as I know Dutch mail did issue only one insect stamp, apart from several butterflies, in 1993 in honour of the Wageningen University, showing a certain fly species, used in organic agriculture.

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  5. You have show us a varied collection of invertebrates; all fine stamps but it's that Royal Mail set that I would like to get my hands on.

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  6. Oh, I like your selection. I like to see insects on stamps... Maybe more than in person! (Well, that applies only to insects that sting).

    I received a crab this week... too late for Sunday Stamps!

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