Science Art: De XII Afbeelding (Banana) by Maria Sibylla Merian
Click to embiggen At the end of the 17th century, this was some weird and wild stuff – a fruit that in the Americas, they […]
entomology
Science Art: 1. Papilio Memnon? 2. Pap. Aeneas
Click to embiggen Butterflies of South Asia and Central and South America. Pretty butterflies. Or, as James Duncan and Sir William Jardine called them, Foreign […]
Monarch migration mystery – solved! (We think.)
BBC reports on the computer model that seems to explain how the monarch butterflies make their amazing Canada-to-Mexico trek: Lead researcher Prof Eli Shlizerman, from […]
*Ants* have the speed… when it comes to boxing.
I’m reading a EurekAlert report on entomologists sitting ringside watching the fastest boxers in the world – trap-jaw ants: In a new study, entomologists at […]
Florida carpenter ants program themselves.
Science Daily reveals how one species of ant takes on their own brains and programs their social roles – doing the job we thought DNA […]
Sorry, arachnophobes. Spiders can go *everywhere*.
Nature reveals how spiders can use webbing to sail through the air… and then land on water and keep on sailing: Morito Hayashi, a spider […]
Science Art: Beetle, magnified 26 diameters, 1871.
Click to embiggen This seems to be a minute beetle, as pictured in Objects for the microscope, being a popular description of the most instructive […]
Plate LXXVII: The First Picture of an American Butterfly from The Butterfly Book by W.J. Holland, 1930 edition.
Click to embiggen In 1930, this picture… or rather, the picture with the inscriptions beside it… had never before been published. And the inscriptions are […]
Insects in tiny space suits. Real ones. In a vacuum.
Can’t beat NBC’s headline for this: Insects Wear Tiny Spacesuits, for Science: Scanning electron microscopes (SEM) provide incredibly detailed images of biological specimens, but the […]
Science Art: Nest of the Honey-Wasp Attacked by Jaguar, 1916
Click to embiggen From Marvels of Insect Life: A Popular Account of Structure and Habit, edited by Edward Step, found in the BioDiversity Library. This […]
Science Art: #11268 (Small, Unidentified Insect On the Exoskeletal Surface Of A Dragonfly)
Click to embiggen This is a strange bug from PHIL, the CDC’s Public Health Image Library. Not the kind of bug the CDC usually deals […]
Science Art: Sarcoptes scabiei, from Brockhaus’ Konversations-Lexikon, 1892.
Click to embiggen They itch. They dig in and they itch. These are the mites that cause scabies, the tiny tunnelers, burrowing into the skin […]
Clawed worm rewrites evolutionary history.
A prehistoric worm with claws, says Live Science, has rewritten the origin story of crabs, spiders and mosquitos: According to a new study of the […]
SONG: “Colonies”
SONG: “Colonies.” (To download: double right-click & “Save As”) ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: Based on “Bees build mental maps to get home”, Nature, 2 Jun 2014, […]
Bees know their way. As in they *know*. They remember.
Nature reveals a truth with some odd implications about insects’ inner lives. Memory tests prove that bees are more thoughtful than we realize: “The surprise […]