20 SEP 2011 by ideonexus
The Asian Giant Hornet
One of the marvels of evolution is the Asian giant hornet, a predatory wasp especially common in Japan. It’s hard to imagine a more frightening insect. The world’s largest hornet, it is as long as your thumb, with a two-inch body bedecked with menacing orange and black stripes. It’s armed with fearsome jaws to clasp and kill its insect prey, and also a quarter-inch stinger that proves lethal to several dozen Asians a year. And with a 3-inch wingspan, it can fly 25 miles per hour (far fa...European honeybees are defenseless against this predator, but Asian honeybees have evolved an amazing counter attack.
21 APR 2011 by ideonexus
Proper Burial for a Naturalist
I will leave a sum in my last will for my body to be carried to Brazil and to these forests. It will be laid out in a manner secure against the possums and the vultures just as we make our chickens secure; and this great Coprophanaeus beetle will bury me. They will enter, will bury, will live on my flesh; and in the shape of their children and mine, I will escape death. No worm for me nor sordid fly, I will buzz in the dusk like a huge bumble bee. I will be many, buzz even as a swarm of motor...To have one's body placed outdoors or in a shallow grave so that it make give birth to thousands of insects that feed on it.