Tag Archives: insects

The eyes of Xenos peckii, a miniscule parasitic fly, inspire optical engineers with their ability to stitch small images into a composite picture.

Mark Moffet explains how a botfly came to parasitize his skin�and how it escaped�illustrating in the process the extent of his commitment to the cause of biodiversity. Video (not for the squeamish) after the jump.

This animation begins with a clinically marvelous evocation of an insect's perspective of the forest floor. And then it gets odd and unsettling. Video after the jump.

Digital filmmaker Fran�ois Vautier installed an ant colony in his scanner and scanned it every week for five years. The movie he made of the results is fairly astonishing. It's high-tech ruin porn at insect scale.

After hearing that one of his friends had been stung upwards of 90 times while trying to exterminate wasps from his property, Professor Sekine of Utsunomiya, Tochigi Prefecture, Japan, who was undoubtedly dealing with a wasp problem of his own, decided to come up with an easier way to conquer the problem of painful and potentially dangerous insect stings. Mohican, ...

If you’re not quite ready to wear the jewelry you made out of your victim’s skin, no worries. Baby steps. You can start with Putrefashion, a bracelet designed to house living insects. There are air-holes so they can remain living while you wear them! Jorge and I designed the bangle for some mealworms we procured at Petco. They like dry ...

So most of us would be all like “yippee” over the fact that bee populations have been steadily declining. Hooray! No more pretending to ignore them so they just leave us alone! No more running like a little girl! But see, losing bees could be bad… very bad. Pollination is crucial for the survival of all of our yummy crops. ...

Christopher Conte, steampunk and insect aficionado, has created some pretty neat creations throughout the years. We haven’t featured any of his work, until now that is. Because, for real, how can you not share a steampunk arachnid? Spiders are one of the most feared creatures in the world. Even the non-venomous variety are creepy. Those legs. *shudder* The six-legged Steam ...

So the TED conferences and talks are in full effect. Imagine you were there. What’s the shittiest thing you could do to an audience listening patiently to every word you have to say? OK, so whatever you thought of, you’ll need to double it because Bill Gates pissed everyone off the other day. How so? By releasing a jar of ...

Seeing this video makes me hope that one day I’ll be flying in a giant robotic butterfly. Researchers in Japan are working on this small ornithopter, a flying device with wings that are modeled after those of a butterfly. The idea is to one day have commercial airplanes with flapping-wing flight just like birds. Above is a high speed video ...