insects
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Featured
Planet of the Arthropods
I’m on the radio! Skeptically Speaking asked me to talk a little bit about insect conservation, in order to round out an interview with the author of Rat Island. (I haven’t read the book yet, but it looks pretty fascinating.) I mostly discussed the 2012 report “Spineless”, published by IUCN (The International Union for Conservation of Nature). You might recognize…
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Science
How to make a giant aluminum ant nest
The internets have been abuzz with this photo today (Click for the full size version). It’s a photo of an aluminum cast of an ant nest made by Walter Tschinkel, a Florida entomologist–but there haven’t been a lot of additional details. The nest you are looking at is one of a Florida harvester ant, and appeared with many other photos…
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Science
Can Stick Insects really mate for 1400 hours?
I saw this tweet a while back, and it made me awfully curious: Is that true? Because that seems like not a very smart thing to do, if you are a large and tasty insect. Or, in this case, two large leaf-eating insects belonging to a group that specializes in being invisible to predators by looking like a stick. Two…
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Science
Art made of Aedeagus
Well, sort of. An artist down under has created an exhibit of insect penises. (Or, to use the proper name for insect intromittent organs, aedeagi.) "Dr Freud could not have conjured a more disturbing fantasy. Yet all these male members are real. These are insect penises – magnified, modelled, photographed or rendered in glass and resin. Creepy, beautiful and seemingly…
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Science
Waiter, There’s a Bug in my Frappuccino
This headline…may be a bit of an overstatement: "Soy Strawberry Frappuccinos are the latest threat to the vegan community." Vegans are feeling threatened(?) by the revelation that Starbucks Soy Frappuccinos contain insect juice. Specifically, cochineal insect extract used as a reddish food coloring. Is there really "bug juice" in your Strawberry Frappuccino? Yes! The Seattle Times has some good reporting on…
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Science
Debugging Grace Hopper
Do you know who Grace Hopper is? And that she has an entomological connection? I should give her the proper title–Rear Admiral Hopper. (A biography described her as “Admiral of the Cybersea.”) Hopper received a PhD in Mathematics from Yale University in 1934, which could not have been easy. She left a faculty position at Vassar to join the Navy…
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Science
Bees, CCD, and Cellphones: Still no Link
Once again, the media is going bonkers over a bee paper, and making claims way out of proportion to any actual results. OMG RADIATIONS IN MAI BEEZ!!! Here are some sample headlines: Cellphones cause bees to swarm and die Phone signals confuse bees and cause them to fly erratically before suddenly dying It’s official–cell phones are killing bees I do…
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Shellac: it’s a bug AND a feature!
Happy Valentines Day! This holiday is traditionally celebrated with a gift of plant genitalia and candy to one’s beloved. The flowers exist to attract pollinating insects, and the candy has an insect connection you might not know about. A common theme at my Bug Blog is that you eat insects on a regular basis. And, frankly, that you need to…
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