Tag Archives | Insects

Billions of Cicadas About to Overrun U.S. East Coast

By on May 7, 2013 in News 0

I have visions of African locust swarms, but apparently being outnumbered 600 to 1 by cicadas shouldn’t worry residents of the East Coast of America as all these insects are looking for is sex. From AP via Black Mountain News:

Any day now, billions of cicadas with bulging red eyes will crawl out of the earth after 17 years underground and overrun the East Coast. The insects will arrive in such numbers that people from North Carolina to Connecticut will be outnumbered roughly 600-to-1. Maybe more.

Scientists even have a horror-movie name for the infestation: Brood II. But as ominous as that sounds, the insects are harmless. They won’t hurt you or other animals. At worst, they might damage a few saplings or young shrubs. Mostly they will blanket certain pockets of the region, though lots of people won’t ever see them.

“It’s not like these hordes of cicadas suck blood or zombify people,” says May Berenbaum, a University of Illinois entomologist.

… Read the rest

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Convenient Insect Cuisine Coming to UK

By on April 12, 2013 in News 0

I’ve likened my gastronomic habits to that of a catfish: If I’m hungry, I’ll be happy to eat just about anything that floats by. I credit my lack of pickiness to growing up in a home where there weren’t a lot of home-cooked meals, so it was catch as catch can. (I also developed terrible eating habits, which I’m still addressing, but that’s a story for another time.) Anyway, I’d cheerfully eat an insect-based meal – especially if it’s nutritious and convenient. I can understand that others might be squeamish, tough.

Via Gothamist:

One British company has now presented their plan (in the video below) to get bugs into our bellies, noting insects are high in protein, and low in fat and cholesterol. But this isn’t just a personal thing—eating them would also be good for the planet, which is being damaged by digestive gas and feed production from the unsustainable herds of cattle that are at the center of the Western diet.

… Read the rest

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Brain Transplants? Just Another Day at the Lab.

By on March 25, 2013 in News 0

photo by Diganta Talukdar

Everyone knows entomologists are the creepiest people in the world. Even entomologists themselves know this.

Perhaps trying to distract from this unwanted attention, bug scientists have been relatively modest about the nightmarish experiments that have been commonplace in their profession for the last 90 years: brain transplants.

IO9 reports on the first instance of insect brain transplants:

… a biologist named Walter Finkler reported that he had managed to successfully transplant the heads of insects. He’d grab two insects, cut off their heads with sharp scissors, and switch them. The fluid that the insects themselves leaked cemented the new heads in place. After a little time — a 1923 article says a few weeks — the insects were healed up and doing whatever their new heads told them to do.

According to Finkler’s research, male heads transplanted to female bodies continued acting as males. The reverse was true of females.… Read the rest

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Human Societies Starting to Resemble Ant Colonies

By on May 5, 2012 in News 11

Ants“The similarities offer a look at just how ever-growing human societies could collapse,” as Jennifer Viegas writes in Discovery News:

The human population is growing at such a staggering rate that we are organizing ourselves more like ant supercolonies, with new research finding that we have more in common now with some ants than we do with our closest living animal kingdom relatives.

The new study, published in the journal Behavioral Ecology, points out that both humans and ants (termites, too) live in societies that may consist of up to a million plus members.

“As a result, modern humans have more in common with some ants than we do with our closest relatives the chimpanzees,” Mark Moffett, author of the study, told Discovery News. “With a maximum size of about 100, no chimpanzee group has to deal with issues of public health, infrastructure, distribution of goods and services, market economies, mass transit problems, assembly lines and complex teamwork, agriculture and animal domestication, warfare and slavery.”…

Read More: Discovery News… Read the rest

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Sex-Deprived Male Fruit Flies Turn to Alcohol

By on March 20, 2012 in News 4

Fruit FlyReports Bloomberg via the San Francisco Chronicle:

Male fruit flies become barflies when rejected by females, choosing alcohol-spiked food more often than their successful brothers in a study that suggests it may be due to a brain chemical also found in humans.

The spurned flies had lower levels of a molecule in their brains called neuropeptide F than the males who were allowed to mate, according to findings published today in the journal Science. Neuropeptide Y, the version found in humans, has been tied to addiction and mental illness, said Ulrike Heberlein, one of the researchers.

The molecule may begin to explain how experience and environment shape human addictions, said Heberlein. About half of a person’s risk of addiction is genetic, and environment is known to play a role. The experiment may help explain the biological triggers that affect certain behavior or cravings and could help research into treatments for addiction …

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Insect Cyborgs May Be The Spies And First Responders Of The Future

By on December 14, 2011 in News 6

111123133510-largeAirborne bugs equipped with sensors, microphones, and cameras will one day go wherever people cannot. Science Daily reports:

Research conducted at the University of Michigan College of Engineering may lead to the use of insects to monitor hazardous situations before sending in humans.

“Through energy scavenging, we could potentially power cameras, microphones and other sensors and communications equipment that an insect could carry aboard a tiny backpack,” Professor Khalil Najafi said. “We could then send these ‘bugged’ bugs into dangerous or enclosed environments where we would not want humans to go.”

The principal idea is to harvest the insect’s biological energy from either its body heat or movements. The device converts the kinetic energy from wing movements of the insect into electricity, thus prolonging the battery life. The battery can be used to power small sensors implanted on the insect (such as a small camera, a microphone or a gas sensor) in order to gather vital information from hazardous environments.

… Read the rest

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Oldest Known “Beds” Had Insect Repellent

By on December 12, 2011 in News 1

No MosquitosInsects have bugged human beings for a long time. Via Discover:

In a South African cave, researchers have uncovered traces of the oldest known human bedding, 77,000-year-old mats made of grasses, leaves, and other plant material. While it’s not especially surprising that early humans would have found a way to improve the cold, generally unpleasant experience of sleeping on a cave floor, archaeologists know little about our ancestors’ sleeping habits and habitats.

Using scanning electron microscopy, the researchers identified several species of local rushes and grasses that made up the bulk of the mattress, as well as leaves of the Cryptocarya woodii tree. These leaves contain chemical compounds that repel mosquitoes, lice, and other insects, suggesting that the cave’s ancient residents protected their bedding with natural insecticide.

… Read the rest

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World’s Biggest Insect Found In New Zealand

By on December 2, 2011 in News 44

No word on whether it is available for adoption. Via the Daily Mail:

Mark Moffett’s find is the world’s biggest insect in terms of weight, which at 71g is heavier than a sparrow and three times that of a mouse. The 53-year-old former park ranger discovered the giant weta up a tree and [it] has now been declared the largest ever found. The creepy crawly is only found on Little Barrier Island, in New Zealand, although there are 70 other types of smaller weta found throughout the country.

insect

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