Happy Halloween. We suggest you recite this paper to any guests who may come seeking thrills: “The Predatory Behavior of the Ogre-Faced Spider Dinopis longipes F. Cambridge (Araneae: Dinopidae),” Michael H. Robinson and Barbara Robinson, American Midland Naturalist, 1971, pp. 85-96.
Dr. Joe Coelho, who is Professor of Biology at Quincy University, Illinois, US, is the author of ‘Insects In Fireworks’ a paper published in Ethnoentomology: an Open Journal of Ethnoentomology and Cultural Entomology, 2: 20–29. To clarify, the paper is not about the use of insects as ingredients in firework mixtures, but rather the […]
How much jumping would a jumping spider jump if a bunch of scientists made her keep jumping? One answer to that, involving one spider—a regal jumping spider—appears in this study, and in an accompanying video: “Energy and Time Optimal Trajectories in Exploratory Jumps of the Spider Phidippus regius,” Mostafa R.A. Nabawy, Girupakaran Sivalingam, Russell J. Garwood, […]
Anticipating Halloween, the American Chemical Society has published a study about using the shadows cast by (kinda sorta) spider legs, for scientific purposes. The paper is: “Elegant Shadow Making Tiny Force Visible for Water-Walking Arthropods and Updated Archimedes’ Principle,” Yelong Zheng, Hongyu Lu, Wei Yin, Dashuai Tao, Lichun Shi, and Yu Tian, Langmuir, 2016, 32 (41), pp. […]
Toshiyuki Nakagaki, Atsushi Tero, Seiji Takagi, Tetsu Saigusa, Kentaro Ito, Kenji Yumiki, Ryo Kobayashi of Japan, and Dan Bebber, Mark Fricker of the UK, were jointly awarded the 2010 Ig Nobel Transportation Planning prize for using slime mould to determine the optimal routes for railroad tracks. See: ‘Rules for Biologically Inspired Adaptive Network Design’ in […]
Not many people with a fear of, say, cockroaches, would be happy to let a few of them roam across their bare hands (in order to alleviate their fears by habituation). In other words: “Although in vivo exposure is the treatment of choice for specific phobias, some acceptability problems have been associated with it.” In […]
Do you like coffee and spiders? If the immediate, unthinking answer to that question is “Yes”, then perhaps you will like this coffee spider graph. A coffee spider graph specialist (who goes by the pen name “Staff”) at a company called Coffee Analysts explains it on their web site: Coffee Taste Spider Graphs Explained By […]
This tweet by May Berenbaum will lead you, if you let it, to an entomological adventure: Testing vampire spider preferences by transplanting male mosquito heads on female mosquito bodies. It’s alive!! See J Exp Biol 6/7 Berenbaum refers, tersely, to this study: “The discerning predator: decision rules underlying prey classification by a mosquito-eating jumping spider,” Ximena […]
Handicapping a genuine fight is not always as easy as it seems. As in other endeavors, much of the “everybody knows” knowledge ain’t necessarily so. Consider this case study from the Scientific Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts: “Eunuchs as better fighters?” Simona Kralj-Fišer [pictured here] and Matjaž Kuntner, Naturwissenschaften, Volume 99, […]
From Leeds and London comes a new medical horror story: “A Hairy Affair: Tarantula Setae-Induced Panuveitis Requiring Pars Plana Vitrectomy,” Anindita Hom-Choudhury, Antigoni Koukkoulli, Jonathan H. Norris, Bataung Mokete and Oliver C. Backhouse, International Ophthalmology, epub January 6, 2012. The authors, at University Hospital, Leed and at St. Thomas’s Hospital, London, report: “Cases of ocular […]