Accidentally equestrian

Tags

beetle, dressage, equestrian, fieldwork, nature, outdoors, wasp

Yesterday I was working in the field, and a wasp somehow got into my trousers while I was walking from one plot to another, hauling my very serious science wagon full of water tanks.

My serious science wagon, with about 45 kg (~100 lb) of water.

Because I was walking, my leg swung forward, the fabric of the trousers trapped the wasp against my thigh, and it stung me in a frantic panic attack.  I am accustomed to this sort of thing, so I shot a quick glance left and right, evaluated my aloneness, and dropped my trousers to get the wasp out.

Apparently, it had flown in through my pocket, which has a mesh inside through which it stung me.  I don’t think anyone spotted me with my trousers down; I was pretty much in the middle of nowhere.

But this whole situation reminded me of a story.  A while back, I was working in a thick tangle of scrubby brush.  My team and I were searching for the nests of a type of bird that loves thickets and dense vegetation.  It was a lot of work to find the nests; we had to check every branch of every shrub in the reserve, which meant many long days of painstakingly working our way through spiny brush.  Because the nests were fairly rare, it often felt like a thankless job.

One day, while I was working my way north, I pulled down a branch to check it for a nest and a beetle tumbled down and fell into my shirt.  It not only fell into my shirt, however, it also fell into my bra.

Now, if you have ever had a fair-sized beetle in your clothing, you will know that its first response it to stick out all of its legs in different directions and start clawing around.  Given that this beetle had fallen into a particularly sensitive area, and given that it had particularly spiny legs, I let out a loud WHOOP and thrashed around through the thicket, struggling to pull my shirt off over my head.

I finally managed it and, almost simultaneously, tumbled out into an open area.  I had thought we were in the middle of nowhere, in a protected nature reserve, so imagine my surprise when I found that I had stumbled right into the center of an equestrian competition.

A young girl performing dressage on a chestnut mare with an elaborately braided mane gaped at me, someone in the audience gasped.

I was still in dire straits, so I reached in my bra, snatched out the beetle with a “HA!” and dove back into the thicket without so much as a “how do you do?”

I hope I didn’t affect the poor girl’s score too badly.

Gömböc (and why turtles are smarter than humans)

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beetle, biology, biomimicry, geometry, gomboc, inventions, man turtles are so smart, mathematics, nature, Shanghair Expo, tortoise, turtle

Gomboc, photo courtesy of Wikipedia

A Gömböc is a three dimensional object which has only one point of stable equilibrium, meaning that no matter how you drop it, it will always right itself and roll back to the exact same spot.

“Just like a Weeble!” you are thinking.  Well, not quite.  A Weeble is weighted at the bottom.  Because the bottom is heaviest, it tends to always be at the bottom.  A Gömböc, on the other hand, depends entirely on its shape.

There is more than one way to make a Gömböc, but humans didn’t figure out how to construct one until the year 2006…that’s right, just 6 years ago.  You may be thinking that this is an incredibly clever thing that we invented, but let me tell you, nature was there first.

Indian Star Tortoise, demonstrating Gomboc properties, photo courtesy of Wikipedia

(Seems like this happens every time we come up with something cool.)

Introducing nature’s Gömböcs: shelled animals like the turtle, the tortoise, and the beetle all have Gömböc like properties.  When turned on their backs, the architecture of their shells helps them right themselves once more.  It’s terribly clever.

Very large Gomboc at the Shanghai expo, photo courtesy of archdaily.com

Now, the largest human-made Gömböc is 3 m by 3 m (at the Shanghai Expo in 2010), but the largest natural Gömböc is the Galapagos tortoise, weighing in at over 400 kg (880 lb).

George may be lonely, but at least he is mathematically fascinating! photo courtesy of Wikipedia

NB: Wait! You may be protesting.  What about sea turtles?!  They are not Gömböc like.  And you are right.  They are streamlined for swimming, and lack the “righting response”.  Problem solved.

The lesser of two weevils

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beetle, coleoptera, curculionidae, drawings, elytra, Haldane, insects, pun, watchmaker, weevil

The lesser of two weevils?

Did you know that there are more species of Coleoptera (the order of beetles) than any other animal order?  And there are more species in the beetle family Curculionidae (weevils) than any other family of animals!

There is a famous quote from the biologist JSB Haldane that, after all his years of studying nature, one thing he had learned about the creator was that he had an “inordinate fondness for beetles.”

Hey, so do I!  This is one thing we have in common.

Beetles are built like tanks…their front two wings have been modified into hard shells called ‘elytra’, which lock together when closed, sealing the fragile membranous wings and the delicate abdomen within a hard casing.  When a beetle locks down, it tucks its antennae into grooves, pulls it’s legs under its body and becomes practically untouchable.

The beetle has to hold its heavy elytra up when flying, and they make it difficult for a beetle to fly well (especially compared to, say, a fly), which is why it is so easy to snatch a beetle out of the air.

When I look at a beetle, I think of all of the intricate details in their anatomy, it reminds me of a fine construction by a watchmaker.  They look so mechanical.

Real beetles with imaginary modifications

Alexander Beetle, by A.A. Milne

Tags

A. A. Milne, Alexander Beetle, beetle, children's poetry, dog bane beetle, dogbane, poem

This is a dogbane beetle...on dogbane. They are surprisingly beautiful.

I found a little beetle, so that beetle was his name,
And I called him Alexander and he answered just the same.
I put him in a matchbox, and I kept him all the day…
And Nanny let my beetle out
Yes, Nanny let my beetle out
She went and let my beetle out-
And beetle ran away.

She said she didn’t mean it, and I never said she did,
She said she wanted matches, and she just took off the lid
She said that she was sorry, but it’s difficult to catch
An excited sort of beetle you’ve mistaken for a match.

She said that she was sorry, and I really mustn’t mind
As there’s lots and lots of beetles which she’s certain we could find
If we looked about the garden for the holes where beetles hid-
And we’d get another matchbox, and write BEETLE on the lid.

We went to all the places which a beetle might be near,
And we made the sort of noises which a beetle likes to hear,
And I saw a kind of something, and I gave a sort of shout:
“A beetle-house and Alexander Beetle coming out!”

It was Alexander Beetle I’m as certain as can be
And he had a sort of look as if he thought it might be ME,
And he had a kind of look as if he thought he ought to say:
“I’m very, very sorry that I tried to run away.”

And Nanny’s very sorry too, for you know what she did,
And she’s writing ALEXANDER very blackly on the lid,
So Nan and me are friends, because it’s difficult to catch
An excited Alexander you’ve mistaken for a match.