Amazing animals

Two reasons insects don't get enough amazement points are (1) so small and (2) so wriggly they are tough to image. This can now be caused by a CO2 overdose

slip 'em a mickey

(now I have chained URLs twice wheeee)

For a very long time folks had immobilised* insects with a wee dram of ethanol. Apparently this CO2 gambit is better but I don't know why.

Anyway, can hope to have more insect contestants in these pages later. They are worthy.

 

Here's a fella highlighting attractive insects:

The Most Interesting Bugs in the World - Atlas Obscura

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Summing up, in a way, what do folks here think are good ways to 'connect' biology to humans who seem to have more important concerns?

 

Brautigan's book was about robots, but OK.

Today's 'animal' is bacteria, which is a heckuva stretch. But notice that many bacteria will enter an amazingly deep form of 'hibernation' under adverse conditions. No other critter gets close to that degree of reconfiguration. Followed by returning to active.

Not well studied at all, which makes this study

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/09/170912134855.htm

big enough for PNAS.

From my perspective, most (like 90%, we don't know) soil bacteria are typically 'asleep'. Add some sugar and some of those wake up (again % unknown). Ribosomes are a dandy experimental target for modern genomic probing. All that would be required is serious interest (funding) to see what is going on.

If you need more direct relevance, intestinal disease bacteria go into minor slowdown (to avoid arousing your immune system) until their numbers are adequate and then kablooey. Another superb experimental target.

 

T. Rex. Ridiculed (from a safe distance) for small forearms. A worthwhile read on the subject:

What’s the Point of T-Rex’s Tiny Arms?

I now realize that they were perhaps only small relative to head, back legs and tail of this beast. In an absolute sense they could still do some worthwhile slashing. Not mentioned is idea that such a large head cannot be accelerated rapidly. Human-leg-sized forearms could potentially have been a lot more agile.

 

Mantis flies are unique in appearance and are a bit extreme about metamorphosis:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/12/171204095002.htm

But mainly, metamorphosis itself is an amazing aspect of many animals. Frogs do it, kinda, many marine critters, but insects are without peer. I do not know of a satisfying ecological 'story' why it is essential for some and absent in other groups.

 

At last! someone else posts here. Those beetles are interesting to handle but you gotta point them elsewhere. A Cornell chemical ecologist worked out the details.

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Could today adds bats, in the news for living too long for their size class. Their telomeres to not get shorter. Possibly related to hibernation. Many excellent bat stories await our attention.

 

Most bats eat fruit (actually, accessory structures) while some are unique pollinators. Many take insects in flight, 'because that's where the nitrogen is.

Sonar imaging is bat-central thing-doing. Marine mammals (cetaceans) 'do sound' at larger scales, but at <10 meters bats are unbeatable.

There are a lot of bat species (1240), within Mammalia (6000?). I go on about termites with ~3000 species among insects' million species, but bats have very well populated the 'little guy' homeotherm niche.

Few bat species feed on blood but those get much attention. Readers may not know that when back in 'the cave', bats tanked with blood share their bounty with others that did not go out, or otherwise missed meals.

Bat x Human is not mostly about blood feeding. It is about disease transfer that bats (broadly) do. I guess we don't know why bats don't promptly die from rabies, etc. With their forelimb skin wings, they move stuff around.

From all that, one might hope bats could be done away with. Yet, commanded extinction is a tricky thing with incomplete knowledge of benefits and harms.

 

Most aquatic animals enjoin gametes indirectly. 'Out there', water, see how it goes. May seem odd to close-acting species, but most of earth's biota has been has been built in this impersonal way.

Yer birds are close-acting but lack directive structures. Thus to our eyes may seem to struggle. Seems to work for them.

The whole directive-structures thing went through some interesting variations before it 'settled' on how you all think things should be done.

To me, arthropods and arachnids appear most creative in terms of who can and who cannot.

Among mammals, humans are in minority for having left bacula behind.

 

Octopus (octopi) present several amazing qualifications for this list. They got recent attention:

A controversial scientific study suggests octopuses came from outer space — Quartz

The linked (free-to-download) article is even more broad, and some readers might click in. You'd see it is a much broader discussion of how biology itself suddenly* got broader, weirder, and more amazing ~500 million years ago.

Full to brimming with speculation, but that can be a pleasant diversion from a steady diet of data.

* in a manner of speaking

 

A two-for-one day for long-suffering readers here.

Diatoms. Your correspondent has been all over them because biological nanomaterials has become a thing here for me.

Diatoms are one-celled photosynthesis-doers; amazing because their cell walls are best described as glass. Wicked diverse and right-sized to enjoy even with an inexpensive microscope. Diatoms' known diversity has given them roles in police forensic science. Kinda like what Sherlock Holmes would have done if AC Doyle has actually read the literature.

They live in both saline and freshwater. The latter (apparently exclusively) create sediments which (when miners arrive) are called diatomaceous earth (DE). That stuff was first hoped to serve as plant fertilizer, but no, because it's just broken glass.

Famous explodey guy Alfred Nobel found that DE prevents nitroglycerine from 'going off' ahead of schedule. Thus, many things, including many well-intentioned holes in the ground, and Nobel Prizes.

Water filtration by DE works very well, not just because these broken-glass bits are nicely sized, but because silica has a way of clinging to anions and molecular orbitals with electrons in uncomfortable excess. Not only explosives have such excesses.

Our most abundant and (often) least-favored co-inhabitants, insects, die (just die!) after exposure to DE. Their chitin exoskeletons include lipids, that DE sucks out (there must be electron-rich molecular orbitals involved). Then those insects lose water and go to Heaven.

Where they're probably not appreciated either, but that is somebody else's problem

Diatoms and their derivative DE are about 3 orders of magnitude too large to be considered nanomaterials. But 'milling them down' to such size is not difficult. They are abundant in certain places. Constructing silica so thin, directly, well, that could be difficult. So we have a thing that grabs 'electrons in excess' very well, and making them smaller increases surface area and thus grabbing, and we simply have yet to 'scope' what can be done with them for human benefit.

Until such time, you are assigned to view diatoms' 'frustrules' in all their glory. And assigned to wonder about how in heck all that diversity could serve any purpose?