Sometimes not tidying up can be a good thing.
Elusive stick insect thought extinct for 80 years is still alive and kicking
The amazing story of an insect presumed dead for decades.
Bed bugs love your dirty laundry, and this has helped them travel the globe
Human laundry is a magnet for bed bugs.
Dominant wasps hand out breaks when workers are scarce, become horrible bosses when they’re plentiful
Wasps should really form their own labor union.
Bees can feel optimism, possibly other ’emotion-like states’ as well, study finds
All it takes to make them happy is some sugar.
No web, no worries — spiders also like to eat vegetarian
Spiders’ diets aren’t limited to juicy insect bits. They spice up their menus with vegetarian courses too, zoologists from the US and UK have found.
New firefly species from California discovered by undergrad student
Despite what you might have seen or not seen, there are actually some fireflies living west of the Rocky Mountains, though they mostly keep to themselves and are rarely spotted by humans. Every once in a while, people spot some. This time, one undergrad who was busy insect hunting in the Los Angeles County hit the jackpot after he discovered a new firefly species.
Flying insects evolved wings 406 million years ago, most complex insect family tree reveals
An international team of more than 100 scientists has undertaken a most complex and challenging task: they’ve determined the timings and patterns of evolution for most of the insect family tree, until they arrived at at the original insect foremother which lived some 500 million years ago. Thus, the researchers were able to pinpoint when the major insect groups, most still
Swarm of 1,000 robots self-assemble in complex shapes
In a breakthrough in robotics, researchers have programmed a swarm consisting of a whooping 1,024 members which can assemble in programmable 2-D shapes. The demonstration might provide insights in how natural self-assembling swarms operate, like ants who join up to form bridges for the good of the colony.
The new spring: charts showing different take to global warming
A while ago, Andrei published a post in which he uploaded and spoke about seven key charts that show plain and simple that global warming is real and man-made, unless you know of another perturbing climate factor other than humans capable of producing the same effects. Like I said, plain and simple – for those reasonable to listen. But don’t
YouTube’s craziest DIY projects: a 2-tonne mechanical insect
We all had our various obsessions as children, but most of us grew out of them and went on to get sensible jobs and take up sensible hobbies… not so Matt Denton from Winchester in Hampshire, UK. Matt’s company Micromagic Systems worked for four years to build a 2-tonne, driveable, turbo diesel hexapod monster which it describes as “the biggest
Insect homosexuality just a case of mistaken identity
Some of you might find it surprising to hear that a lot of animals engage in homosexual behavior. Close to 1,500 species, ranging from primates to gut worms, have been observed engaging in such behavior and this is well documented for 500 of them. No one comes close to insects and spiders, though, which have a significantly larger homosexual/hetero ratio
This insect is the first known creature gifted by nature with ‘mechanical gears’
The Issus coleoptratus or issus for short is a small hopping insect that can leap at tremendous speeds and lengths compared to its tiny size. Actually, it’s one of the fastest accelerating creatures known to biologists, capable of accelerating at nearly 400 g’s—a rate more than 20 times what a human body can withstand. To achieve this fascinating feat the issus performs
Mysterious engineering insect builds white-picket fence to protect egg nest
While browsing reddit the other day, I came across a most peculiar finding. One of the users, Decapod73 or Tony Alexander in real life, posted photos he took while on an expedition in the Peruvian Amazon forest of intricate structures that bear an uncanny resemblance to a white picket circular fence – right in the center, half of a cocoon lays proud
Dung beetle uses poop ball cargo as air conditioning
The dung beetle is an extreme survivor. Not only does it feed on poop, but it also fashions a hefty ball out of it, up to 50 times its own mass, that it rolls through the scorching desert. We’re talking 60 degrees Celsius here. A new study that has closely followed this truly remarkable creature has found that the dung
Fossil find of 520 million year-old arthropod might be the missing link in insects evolution
Paleontologists have uncovered the fossil remains of a 3-inch-long extinct arthropod in Yunnan Province, China, dating from the Cambrian period. What makes it particularly special is the fact that it provides an unusual example of preservation of the brain and nervous system, atypical for fossil records this old, but most interestingly it suggests that complex brains evolved much earlier than
Termite workers suicide to protect colony from invaders. Remarkable social behavior
Defense, like offence, is expensive for any animal. It takes resources and a lot of energy, and for some, it even comes at an ultimate sacrifice. Such is the case of a species of termite found in the rainforests of French Guiana. There, worker termites, after they age and are no longer capable of serving the colony at their full potential,
Earliest evidence of pollination is 100 million years-old, found in perfectly preserved insects
Scientists have uncovered pieces of fossilized amber containing tiny female insects called thrips, which upon closer inspections were found to have particles of pollen dusted over them. The insects found are around 100 million years old, officially making them the oldest pollination record ever found. During the lower Cretaceous Period, which corresponds to the recently discovered fossilized thrips, the world’s flowering
Hyper-parasite defends ant colonies from zombie-ant fungus
Last year, we reported on one of the most gruesome and horrific acts that goes on in nature; it seems so unreal, like if some sort of SciFi monstrous scenario transcended into the realm of reality, that one has a hard time wrapping his head around it. Yes, as some of you might have read previously, I’m talking about the zombie-ant fungus
Tap into the cockroach’s neural activity with the SpikerBox
Neurons are the absolute core components of the nervous system that transmit information through electrical and chemical signals. I once wondered how neural activity might sound like, and I imagined something like a huge gridline sprinkled with electricity bolts though out. I didn’t know about the SpikerBox, back then, though. It’s a gadget, developed by educational entrepreneurs Timothy Marzullo and Gregory