I was 110% convinced that the Careening Dirigibug was called the Bombardier Beetle and it took my friend looking up to remind me that no, that’s not its name, and bombardier beetles are a real insect.
“The patient: this 3-day-old little boy was born with torn upper and lower wings. Let’s see how we can help!”
Today the Department of Awesomely Good Deeds salutes costume designer and master embroiderer Romy McCloskey who used her fine skills with delicate materials to help a monarch butterfly she’d raised and who’d emerged from his cocoon with damaged right wings.
“The operating room and supplies: towel, wire hanger, contact cement, toothpick, cotton swab, scissors, tweezers, talc powder, extra butterfly wing”
“Securing the butterfly and cutting the damaged parts away. Don’t worry it doesn’t hurt them. It’s like cutting hair or trimming fingernails”
“Ta-da! With a little patience and a steady hand, I fit the new wings to my little guy”
“The black lines do not match completely and it is missing the black dot (male marking) on the lower right wing, but with luck, he will fly”
“FLIGHT DAY! After a day of rest and filling his belly with homemade nectar, it is time to see if he will fly”
“With a quick lap around the yard and a little rest on a bush, he was off! A successful surgery and outcome! Bye, little buddy! Good luck”
Wasps are functionally the same as bees, we just hate them because they’re not as cute n can hurt you more than once without dying
Except they’re not because wasps don’t make honey, they aren’t pollinators, they’re completely different insects and serve a very different function.
Not sure where you’re getting that information from but it is not correct, as wasps are actually very important pollinators.
There are also 20,000 species of described bees and of those there are only a small handful that produce honey, and of those there are currently even less (off the top of my head I can only think of 4) species we can actually harvest any honey from.
Wasps are also pollinators, ever heard of fig wasps, there are a superfamily of wasps called Chalcidoidea and each different species of fig often has one or two very specific species of wasp needed to pollinate it.
There’s still this misconception that wasps aren’t great pollinators compared to bees but this isn’t true, wasps are just as ecologically important in pollination as bees are, and also pollinate flowering plants and trees. For example; thynnine wasps pollinate orchids like this dwarf hammer orchid.
This is super common in Australia where we have about 200 species of orchids (spider orchids, elbow orchids, flying duck orchids) that use male insects (most of which are wasp species) to pollinate.
Also most bee species can hurt you more than once without dying. Yes, honeybees have a barbed stinger and die after they sting, but not all bees are honeybees.
And, as our curator likes to say, evolutionarily speaking bees are basically just vegan wasps.
I’m so happy to see this new movement lauding the many virtues of wasps. I’ve had so many people ask me “what are they good for?” Like what the fuck are YOU good for Heather? Do you even know how many different kinds of wasps there are? Yes they’re important, dammit! An animal doesn’t become worthless just because you personally don’t like it! Your opinion means fuckall to the ecosystem! It doesn’t care!
Also there are thousands of species of parasitoid wasps that are significant predators of other insects and spiders, and the majority of those wasps can’t or won’t sting you anyways.
Just because it isn’t cute enough to make you happy doesn’t mean it’s bad.
Close-Up of the First Mechanical Gear Ever Found in Nature
The biological form of a mechanical gear was observed in nature for the first time in juvenile planthoppers (Genus: Issus), a common insect that can be found in gardens across Europe.
The insect has hind-leg joints with curved cog-like strips of opposing ‘teeth’ that intermesh, rotating like mechanical gears to synchronize the animal’s legs when it launches into a jump. The finding demonstrates that gear mechanisms previously thought to be solely man-made have an evolutionary precedent.
We’ll be opening the pre-order for our new Mantis doll within weeks! 🙂 Visit link in the profile for more information. Cheers!
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#bjd #mantis #flowermantis #doll #petdoll
PiraticOctopus 