“Why make food when you have replicators?” you clearly have not tried one of Liberty Balboa’s cheesesteaks, so overflowing with filth, cockroach parts, and brotherly love that the Vanguard called it “an affront to everything we’ve worked so hard for”
Great article In Defense of the #Cockroach! We’ve successfully helped many many kids understand that cockroaches can be cute, sweet creatures - of the thousands of cockroach species, only about five are considered pests! They’re also incredibly important animals, serving as both decomposers and food sources throughout the world!
What do you think, can adults also learn to appreciate this oft-maligned animal, or are only kids open-minded enough? This Tree Frog Trekker agrees with Bob Pyle that the Madagascar Hissing Cockroach can be “quite delightful—sort of like a mouse with a roach suit on.”
Illustration for Zakiya Kassam’s article “Cockroaches are tolerated in my home. They’re self-sufficient, social critters I’ve come to respect” in today’s @globeandmail.
Spoilers galore! These are some of the highlights of the Ontario Science Centre’sBug Lab Exhibition. This travelling exhibition was created by Te Papa, the museum of New Zealand in collaboration with Weta. It’s mostly geared towards children but there’s quite a bit here for all to enjoy, and I’m very grateful I was able to go. Yesterday was actually its last day in the OSC. This is an exhibition that I really think people should go to see when it arrives to their neck of the woods, so I won’t be sharing everything I’ve seen. Since these are exhibitions created by others, I’ve labelled them with the mantis logo and only take credit for the photography; the hard work and effort of this collaboration deserves all the spotlight it can, especially with all the wondrous displays! There are even interactive elements to enjoy such as magnifying glasses, touch screens and game parts. For myself, it’s all about the insects and what we can learn from them. I begin this showcase with the tribute to the Māori people that highlights how all life is connected and how insects have inspired them. You’ll have to discover those inspirations and life for yourself, but I can promise you they are all beautiful.
The showcase mentions that insects were created alongside “ugly things” by the gods, and so have included an insect native to New Zealand: the Weta, which often has a reputation for being called “ugly”. It may not be as traditionally appealing like other winged Orthopterans, it brings something more primal, powerful and wild to the fold; not something angry, but more like a old friend to the more temperature Grasshoppers. Important as that display is, children and visitors may be more drawn to the insect displays on showcase containing pinned insects and models. The pinned insect exhibits highlight the most prominent parts of the insect world to us: their biodiversity (including differences within even an order such as with Coleoptera), their beauty as seen with the showcase of winged insects, their evolutionary trajectory (as seen with an ancestor of modern day Odonates: the Griffinfly; 70cm wingspan) and how they can be used to benefit humanity. Insect wings were lighted as a marvel of design for flight technology and for the financial sector using Butterfly wing iridescence as inspiration (yay nanoholes). Swarming of insects even provides inspiration for drone movement and coordination with themselves! With all ideas, it’s amazing how inspiration can strike!
My favorite displays here are definitely the large models* of insects in their natural environment! The level of detail and story-telling is astonishing, especially with the Hymenopterans which is what I’d like to share! While a bit terrifying, we have a realization of how the Jewel WaspcapturesRoaches for its offspring. We call it brain surgery and the Waspcalls it incubation! Next to that, an intruder has found a hive and is marking it for the swarm! Fortunately, the hive’s defenders are ready for this scout and mobilize. There’s no secret to the power of the Asian Giant Hornet (and is the first true Hornet to grace this blog), but the Honeybees that live alongside it have adapted against it: they swarm the large intruder in coordination, form a Bee-ball and vibrate their bodies to generate heat to roast the Hornet. This exhibit even includes an interactive element to help generate heat to help the brave Bees! Though a few workers may fall defending their home, the colony lives in gratitude. Not yet safe however, the worker Bees also have to clean up the pheromone markers left by the scout so that other Hornets don’t pick up the trail. These are all astonishing feats of the natural world!
*Note: Other large models featured include displays of Dragonflies in flight and the camouflaging abilities of the Orchid Mantis (Hymenopus coronatus). You have to discover those for yourself.
Pictures were taken on February 20, 2022 at the Ontario Science Centre using a Google Pixel 4. Thank you for the Bugs!
What’s this? Educational insects? Yes, indeed! Over the weekend I got the chance to visit the Ontario Science Centre to see their Bug Lab Exhibition. The showcases were created by Te Papa, the museum of New Zealand in collaboration with Weta, both coming together to make something absolutely astounding, engaging and interesting. The exhibitions feature large models of insects in their environment and exhibits that demonstrate the magnificence of insects and how much there is to learn about them and apply that knowledge to our own growth as a society. It is mostly geared towards children, but I thoroughly enjoyed it myself, and I’m very grateful I was able to go. Images of the showcase will arrive on the blog next Tuesday (can’t go spoiling things just yet), but in the meantime we have tropical insects to see from the live showcase, many of them a familiar sight in the educational environment. Since these insects belong to the Centre, I’ve labelled them with the mantis logo. During the live showcase, the presenter was kind enough to allow us to take pictures of these large creature after introducing them to the audience.
Our presenter was even brave enough to pick one up and let it crawl in her hand to demonstrate how a Roach of this size moves when brought into the light. Good thing too, otherwise they may have spent the entire show hidden underneath their logs away from the hustle and bustle of Science Centre. Their ability to hide comes from their flattened, armored body that lets them squeeze into tight spaces without fear of being crushed. There were 3 Roaches to see in this terrarium, a mix of males and females (look for the bumps), all robust and healthy from a steady diet of vegetables and supplemental powder. Sometimes things can get too excited and a Roach can fall into their dish flipped over, but it does provide an opportunity to view the underside of these swift speedsters. Since these insects are large and exotic, they’re a hit with children (even if the adults may not agree) and their lack of wings means they are not likely to escape easily, even if they tickle when they walk. Though time was limited, I’d have liked to see more on these Roaches and to hear more about their role in the ecosystem as detritivores and how their hiss (it was briefly mentioned, but most how it is created) is used to communicate. I wonder if I’ll ever get to hold one of these myself in the future.
Pictures were taken on February 20, 2022 at the Ontario Science Centre using a Google Pixel 4. Please go and visit the bugs while you can!
So, I saw The Bad Guys, and I LOVED IT. Naturally, I decided to take Dr. Roach and give her a movie counterpart!
Ms. Cockroach is an intern at Sunnyside Laboratory, working on her college graduate degree online at the same time. What do you know, the only day she got a day off from both college and her internship at the same time was the day that the guinea pig breakout happened! Hearing the news about this mess has simply furthered her goal: now she wants to try experiments of her own. Work safety? Good budget? What’s that? She’s a college student, she doesn’t have a budget to start! Thankfully her body’s fine with her scarfing down junk food thanks to her biological makeup…maybe her body’s also fine scarfing down potentially radioactive chemicals to try testing things?
Cockroaches are the ultimate survivors. Famous for their hardiness, they have wandered the Earth in their modern form since the age of the dinosaurs approximately 200 million years ago. Although they can go for long periods of time without food or water, they have a remarkable ability to eat just about anything - including hair, wallpaper paste and leather book-bindings. A new study reveals that their flexible diet is supported by jaws that use a combination of ‘fast’ and ‘slow’ muscle fibres to cope with a wide range of materials. Cockroaches have mouthparts known as mandibles, which consist of horizontally-aligned blades a bit like scissors. When the mandibles are activated by fast muscle fibres, energy is released rapidly to allow quick but comparatively weak bites. In contrast, slow muscle fibres gradually build up to maximum strength, and the use of these can enable a cockroach’s bite force to reach up to 50 times stronger than its own bodyweight. In relative terms, this is 5 times more powerful than the force we can generate with our own jaws.
Ref: Weihmann T. et al., 2015. Fast and powerful: biomechanics and bite forces of the mandibles in the American cockroach Periplaneta Americana.PLoS ONE 10: e0141226[link]
According to my brother, the camera operators are told in advance when they’re going to be cut to or at least given a heads-up, so this guy assumed he was safe to use his camera basically as a pair of binoculars bc he wasn’t supposed to get the focus. But the person who was switching between camera feeds accidentally cut to his camera by mistake instead of the one that was supposed to be filming, so they ended up televising what was supposed to me one man’s private cockroach observation moment.
We all need to slow down and appreciate bugs now and then.
Some spacey colorful images for streams bc I’m replacing my laptop soon! I have been also using these on my facebook “fan page” or whatever. Also my new icon for my main page for alot of pages. DBD stands for “dumb bitch disease/disorder” there is no cure sadly :c
