The Great White Bug

 

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

Giant bugs in Canada

Super-spreader event

 

Let´s hope this is just one of those "Monthly Doomer Report" scenarios. After all, invasive marine species are already spreading throughout the world due to our international shipping lanes.

And we´re still here, right? As is most of our seafood... 

Ships stuck in strait of Hormuz pose "super-spreader" biodiversity threat, scientists warn 

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! 

The Piltdown Octopus

 

Let´s be honest about this. Had this fossil not been mentioned in the popular Guiness Book of World Records, absolutely nobody would have given a damn. Who cares if octopi evolved 150 million years later than previously thought? But sure, some pesky creationist might dub this "The Piltdown Octopus" and make it just as famous as the bombardier beetle!

From the article (see link below):    

>>>A fossil that was fundamental to describing the evolution of octopuses turns out to have been an impostor, all along.

>>>The famous 300-million-year-old Pohlsepia mazonensis, discovered in 2000 and later lauded in the Guiness Book of World Records as the oldest known octopus species, has been reclassified as a nautiloid – a shelled cephalopod closely related to the nautiluses living in the ocean today.

>>>This means that scientists are going to have to redraw the cephalopod family tree – the discovery pushes the record of nautiloid soft tissue back by around 220 million years, and brings the earliest evidence for octopuses forward by around 150 million years.

World´s oldest known "octopus" turns out to be an entirely different animal

Schwärmerei

 

Well, probably not...

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

Hopeful monsters

 

I´m still trying to process this as we speak. Our man Anton discusses LOME a.k.a. the Late Ordovician Mass Extinction. Which I´m sure you never heard about. Yet, your evolutionary grandmama might very well hail from this period of Earth history about 445 million years ago. The short story is that a series of radical changes in the Earth´s climate became too much for the dominant species at the time, which included jawless fishes known as conodonts and a number of peculiar squid-like molluscs. Jawed fishes did exist, but were few and specialized. Guess what happened next?

Thanks to LOME, jawed fish from isolated habitats in what is now southern China - where they had diversified in standard "hopeful monster" fashion - could start spreading throughout the oceans, filling the now empty ecological niches. Anton, ever the optimist, even refers to what happened as an "ecological reset". Something similar happened after the disappearence of non-avian dinosaurs, when mammals could freely radiate and take over. And here we are!

Not addressed in this happy video is the ecological reset after *we* are gone. Who knows, maybe jawless fish will again take over the oceans? That would be a fitting revenge after all these years!

Infohazard

 

A 30-minute autistic video on (alleged) infohazards and cognitohazards. OK, a few of them use to rattle me too. Most others...not so much. LOL. Am I *that* normal, then? Damn. Somehow, that realization is a cognitohazard in itself...

Many of the intellectual "hazards" mentioned in this video are either obviously false or simply meaningless. So why bother with them? Others are pure thought experiments from horror stories or computer games. But sure, maybe some autists or very sensitive people are affected by this stuff. 

What´s up with the Invertebrata, btw? Now, *that* shit almost scared the hell out of me!   

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