Monday, February 25, 2013 - 5:56pm
There's a scene in Spider-Man 2 where Spidey stops a runaway subway train using just webbing. Thanks to science, we now know that's realistic.
Bugs stories
Friday, February 22, 2013 - 12:51pm
The secret world of plants and insects just got a little less mysterious thanks to a new finding that reveals a discreet electrical communications dynamic.
Monday, January 28, 2013 - 5:34pm
Bugs that roll poo into balls. Not too impressive, right? But dug beetles are clever enough to use the Moon, the stars, and even the Milky Way galaxy to navigate.
Friday, January 25, 2013 - 6:19pm
A buzzing swarm of midges may look totally random and gross, but it's not. At least, it's not totally random. Still gross, though.
Friday, December 21, 2012 - 4:59pm
I am not a fan of bugs. I am also not a fan of global warming. The day may be approaching where I have to choose between the lesser of two weevils, thanks to the results of a recently published study, which "clearly shows that mealworm should be considered as a more sustainable alternative to milk, chicken, pork and beef." Um, ew?
Friday, September 7, 2012 - 7:22am
Cockroaches are incredibly creepy at the best of times, but what if you could control their movements? A team from the IBionicS laboratory at North Carolina State University have done just that, mounting control circuitry on some giant cockroaches and making them do their bidding.
Monday, June 18, 2012 - 1:17pm
Mosquitoes, unfortunately, have a valuable place in our ecosystem or something, so going out and nuking all of the little buggers is probably not a good option. The worst part about mosquitoes isn't mosquitoes themselves anyway: it's the malaria parasites that they carry, and genetic modification may have finally solved that problem for good.
Thursday, June 14, 2012 - 10:59am
Drop dead gorgeous. Killer good looks. This new fly trap is a designer's dream and a summertime bug's worst nightmare all wrapped into one. The new designer fly trap with the glowing LED light is a little lamp that will look great on your deck, but packs a unique punch to keep the bugs away from your outdoor leisure time.
Wednesday, April 4, 2012 - 10:47am
Ticks have just become officially scarier. They are the first organisms to live through a trip through a scanning electron microscope. They survived a beam of electrons and vacuum pressure and still kicked their creepy little legs through it and on the other side.
Monday, April 2, 2012 - 12:16pm
The American Museum of Natural History, the home of "that giant whale," welcomed a new creature feature into its halls on Saturday. It's called Creatures of Light, and it's all about bioluminescence, a naturally occurring chemical phenomenon that lets a variety of critters light up like LEDs.
If you've sat on a porch somewhere and saw fireflies signal to one another in the dark with pinpricks of pulsing yellow, you've seen bioluminescence in action. Fireflies use the signals to attract prospective mates, but that's not the only way animals employ the ability. The stoplight loosejaw fish is "among the few deep-sea animals that both produce and see red light," according to the exhibit. It's basically got its own built-in night vision that lets it see the shrimp it hunts without its red glow giving it away.
Bioluminescence isn't constrained to flies and fish. As you'll see in the gallery below, there are a lot of different species that use it, and in a lot of different ways. Read on for more on what to expect at Creatures of Light: Nature's Bioluminescence.
