The Great White Bug

 

This seems to be an entertaining site, might explore it more this weekend!

Giant bugs in Canada

Formikarium

 

Ibland blir man trött på...jag vet inte...kineser eller nåt.

Illegal handel med jättemyror hotar ekosystem

Germany has fallen

 

Credit: Christian Fischer

The invasion has begun...

Germany battles aggressive outbreak of poisonous caterpillars

Good news or soylent bees?

 

A propos Anton´s latest video on YouTube: like everyone else, I assumed the "bizarre discovery" was that honeybees EAT DEAD HUMAN BODIES and that this somehow ends up in our honey, making it SOYLENT GREEN. 

Instead, the (non)bizarre discovery is that millions of mining bees live at a New York cemetery and turn out to be extremely important pollinators of commercial crops (in this case, apples). Which might mean that the "bee apocalypse" has been postponed...again. Thank god, by the way!

I prefer apples to soylent any day.  

On the Wallace line

 

- Nah, if you try and steal the butterflies, I just call my grandmama Kali! 

Lord of the Flies

Some fun facts (or factoids?) about the space rock we currently inhabit. From Wikipedia, I believe.

>>>Insects are the most diverse group of animals; they include more than a million described species and represent more than half of all known living organisms. The total number of extant species is estimated at between six and ten million; potentially over 90% of the animal life forms on Earth are insects. 

>>>Insects may be found in nearly all environments, although only a small number of species reside in the oceans, which are dominated by another arthropod group, crustaceans, which recent research has indicated insects are nested within.

>>>In 1982, Terry Erwin published an estimate of global species richness of 30 million, by extrapolating from the numbers of beetles found in a species of tropical tree. In one species of tree, Erwin identified 1,200 beetle species, of which he estimated 163 were found only in that type of tree. Given the 50,000 described tropical tree species, Erwin suggested that there are almost 10 million beetle species in the tropics. 

>>>In 2011 a study published in PLoS Biology estimated there to be 8.7 million ± 1.3 million eukaryotic species on Earth. A 2016 study concludes that Earth is home to 1 trillion species.

The good news is that most of that trillion aren´t insects. The bad news is that they are...micro-organisms! Either way, we live on Bug Planet. And God is the Lord of flies.

Lovecraft´s Lucia

 

- You *do* know that we are evolutionary cousins, right?
- Nah, I´m a special creation. God loves beetles! 

Just watched a rather boring French docu about the evolution (or is it EVIL-ution) of insects. Apparently, Lucia (or LUCIA = Last Universal Common Insect Ancestor) was a crustacean which crawled out of the ocean...and the rest is history. Hundreds of millions of years of history, to be exact. 

No surprise there. I mean, the idea that fleas, locusts and termites (or the praying mantis!) are ultimately derived from a primordial cousin to crayfish and crabs does make a certain intuitive sense. They are equally eerie and unsettling. Like some stuff straight out of Lovecraft.

Although I have to say that arachnids are even worse. Where did *they* come from, I wonder? Color out of space?  

    

Dude

 

Credit: Shree Ganesh

A propos two previous blog posts. God loves bizarre ants. Adjust your theological speculations accordingly. We will now resume our regular broadcast. Thank you. 

Xenoparity

 

Biggest science news of the decade, nay, century? Not even sure if I understand this. 

Apparently, the Iberian harvester ant (Messor ibericus) has a very peculiar life cycle. For some reason, mating between "normal" males and queens can´t produce workers, only other males and queens. The queens therefore have to mate with males from a *completely different ant species* in order to produce hybrid workers. This other species is known as Messor structor. This is apparently considered a form of parasitism, presumably because the sperm of M. structor is effectively "stolen" by the M. ibericus queens to produce infertile workers for ibericus colonies.

Unexpectedly, colonies of the Iberian harvester ant have hybrid workers even in areas where there are no Messor structor ants, including at islands. This is where it gets weird. Really weird. Scientists have apparently found structor males inside ibericus nests even in areas where structor simply doesn´t appear in the wild?! Further research suggests that Messor ibericus queens can "clone" Messor structor males. Yes: ants of one species can have offspring of an entirely different species!

WTF?!

It´s not clear to me whether the Iberian queen mates with her own offspring in truly incestuous fashion to produce the workers, or whether another queen gets the honor, but the point is that there seems to be an entire "slave race" within the Iberian colonies, a "clonal lineage" of structor males bred for the sole purpose to father the hybrid worker-caste and then die. 

Nor is it clear to me how this could even work. I assume the sperm of Messor structor must have been "harvested" at some point in the distant past (perhaps thousands of years ago) and is now passed on somehow by the Messor ibericus queens. Which makes me wonder for how long this can continue, if the sperm deteriorates, and so on. Frankly, I had to read this stuff about five times before I got *some* kind of inkling about what on earth these guys are even talking about!

But yes, it does sound like science fiction. Especially since the two relevant species aren´t even closely related, having diverged evolutionarily about five million years ago. But perhaps what´s five million years to Man is only one day to Ant?    

Almost like science fiction: European ant "clones" members of another species

One mother for two species (the original scientific paper)

On a planet alien

 

Japanese scientists found a bizarre species of ant (bizarre *even* for ants, that is) which consist entirely of parasitic queens which reproduce by virgin birth ("cloning") and then hijack colonies of other ant species. Again: welcome to planet Earth, visitor! Where every ant is a queen...

Every ant is a queen in this parasitic species

Back to Godhead

 

Since totemism is "the world´s oldest religion", I semi-seriously wonder what´s my spirit-animal? And yes, I´m aware that totems and spirit-animals aren´t the same thing. But I can´t really contact my tribal ancestors 250,000 years ago, can I now?

I´ve always found magpies to be somewhat sympathetic (don´t tweet at me, bruh) so I suppose Pica pica pica might be it, I mean that Latin name is hilarious! And yes, it simply means "magpie magpie magpie". 

Another possibility is the black swan, since it´s a good symbol for sudden and unexpected spiritual enlightenment. You know, a black swan event. 

I´m somewhat partial to ants and termites, too...

Bird brains disprove materialism

 

Scientists have finally started to use "the brains God gave geese" and realized that (non-human) animals are - wait for it - conscious?! I mean, maaaan, who knew? Or was it *self*-conscious? Same thing.

No surprise there. But thanks for noticing, I suppose. What´s more intriguing is that different kinds of brains can give rise to the same kind of (self)-consciousness. Brainy creatures mentioned in the video above include humans, birds (and not just the inevitable corvids), crocs and even ants. 

So how can entirely distinct kinds of physical structures cause animals to be equally conscious? Please don´t tell the Idealists, LOL. 

Therefore God. 

On the cryptid cusp

 

A video entitled "The Most Mysterious Cryptids in the World". Somewhat ironically, many of them seem more plausible than the regular cryptids?! Perhaps because we are dealing with actual physical evidence. Or even strange species theorized to exist, which were later actually discovered.

Of course, there are some exceptions. I mean, "Strange Creatures Seldom Seen" is obviously a collection of folklore or even talltales, so don´t worry, no super-sized woodpecker larger than an eagle will corner you in the Canadian outback! Well, I hope...

Could be of some passing interest.

Goddess before Man?

 

The Shakti communicating with an intelligent species on Terra Prime. 

Myggornas planet

 

- Kan det vara myggor, kanske?

Myggor har varit "evolutionärt stabila" (och sett ut ungefär som idag) i 100 miljoner års tid. Anatomiskt moderna människor har bara funnits i omkring 300 000 års tid! Jag menar, vad fan...

Har dock inte förstått vem de ettriga tvåvingarna drack blod ifrån "när det begav sig". Varmblodiga dinosaurier?

100 miljoner år gamla myggor funna i bärnsten

The light-bringer

 

Guess what, guyz? They discovered a new species of bee in Australia. The bee has horns (?!) so the scientists named it after...you guessed it...Lucifer. No plausible deniability there, LOL. 

It´s full scientific name is Megachile (Hackeriapis) lucifer. Or just Megachile lucifer if the concept of subgenus makes your head spin. 

Now, we eagerly await all the conspiracy theories on the web about the devil´s new bee, the Club of Rome, and what have you!

Devilishly distinctive new bee discovered in Australia

A spring without bees

- Yes, I´m a genetically modified bee! Any probs?

Please read the plot summary of this movie at Wikipedia below! Strangest take so far on Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), aliens, flat earth and conspiracy theory?

Bugonia (film)

Nuke da roach

 

I removed an earlier blog post about cockroaches and nuclear war, since I´m no longer certain about ChatGPT´s anwers to my questions...

The white pill?

 

So the disappearence and mass death of the Western honeybee has been solved. Not by Anthroposophical organic farming, zero population growth or a ban on eating honey. But by high technology, specifically the invention of a new pollen substitute which can feed the bee colonies indefinitely. 

Western (and therefore modern) civilization has been saved. Cornucopia next? 

Or no?

Things are getting cray cray

The Nationalnyckeln project slowly moves forward, and who knows, at this pace maybe they will reach their declared goal around the year 3000 or so. The goal being to publish books covering all (!) extant species of multi-cellular organisms found in Sweden. The latest volume, hot off the presses, is titled "Nationalnyckeln: Kräftdjur - tiofotade kräftdjur. Crustacea: Euphausiacea - Decapoda". Yepp, things are going to get cray cray! 

In somewhat plainer English, the book covers two groups of crustaceans: the krill and the decapods. The latter group includes shrimps, crabs, hermit crabs, crayfish, lobsters and God (or is it the other guy) knows what else. I always wax philosophical when leafing through works of this kind. The idea that an indifferent cosmos just tugging along gave rise to sinister-looking creatures like decapods is frankly scarier than the Gnostic take that of course the Devil did it.

We get to meet some old favorites, too. I mean, I can´t be the only person around here who actually *ate* some of this creatures. From my childhood, I remember panicky news broadcasts about the signal crayfish destroying the last remaining populations of European crayfish in Swedish lakes. The European species had already been severly decimated by a disease known as the crayfish plague. Introducing the American signal crayfish (which is resistant to the disease) was originally seen as the salvation of the Swedish crayfish industry (and, I suppose, one of our hallowed summer holiday traditions). Unfortunately, it turned out that the signal crayfish was a vector of the plague - precisely because it´s immune to it. The end result was an almost complete collapse of the remaining European crayfish population! Maybe just as good that I gave up eating crayfish long ago.

As usual, I learned a few new things from this book. For instance, I had no idea that there is actually a European lobster found in Swedish waters (but then, I never really reflected on the exact provenance of my lobster sauce). Or that the claws of the decapods are actually legs?! Or rather legs that adapted to a somewhat different function entirely.

But mostly, I felt ontological dread looking at the full color pictures of bizarre crab-like creatures from the oceanic depths you never knew existed in the first place, realizing that the first representatives of still extant decapod groups evolved over 200 million years ago. Our culinary problems with IAS crayfish are just a blip in the cosmic ocean! And perhaps even a bit cray cray...