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The Hive: The Malthus Bug Thread

Started by Malthus, April 12, 2013, 09:52:05 AM

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Malthus

Quote from: garbon on October 21, 2014, 12:42:40 PM
Not bugs but here is fun companion. House infested with garter snakes. That would be rather annoying but I don't imagine it would skeeve me out.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/102-snakes-seeking-sanctuary-slither-into-home-near-regina-1.2806795?cmp=rss

Snakes. Why'd it have to be snakes?
The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane—Marcus Aurelius

Malthus

The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane—Marcus Aurelius

Maximus

Quote from: garbon on October 21, 2014, 12:42:40 PM
Not bugs but here is fun companion. House infested with garter snakes. That would be rather annoying but I don't imagine it would skeeve me out.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/102-snakes-seeking-sanctuary-slither-into-home-near-regina-1.2806795?cmp=rss
The house my brother currently owns in Saskatchewan had a similar problem. The previous occupants, who were friends of his, had snakes coming out of the drains, toilet etc. Turns out the people who had built the house had inadvertently placed the septic tank in a snake pit. The community got together and cleared the place out. They killed and carried out many hundreds of garter snakes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNVNipoEUrY

garbon

"I've never been quite sure what the point of a eunuch is, if truth be told. It seems to me they're only men with the useful bits cut off."

I drank because I wanted to drown my sorrows, but now the damned things have learned to swim.

Malthus

Quote from: garbon on October 21, 2014, 12:57:04 PM
Quote from: Malthus on October 21, 2014, 12:51:15 PM
Which reminds me ...   ;)

http://news.yahoo.com/goliath-encounter-puppy-sized-spider-surprises-scientist-rainforest-125720953.html

Oh hell no.

The article misses out mentioning one of the spider's defensive mechanisms: "Its sheer size and grossness causes those afraid of spiders to run away, screaming".  ;)
The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane—Marcus Aurelius

garbon

Actually I think they likely fall dead from fright. -_-
"I've never been quite sure what the point of a eunuch is, if truth be told. It seems to me they're only men with the useful bits cut off."

I drank because I wanted to drown my sorrows, but now the damned things have learned to swim.

Malthus

Seriously though - somehow, I don't have the same instinctive reaction of fear for plus-sized critters as for their smaller creepy-crawly relations. Maybe, because they look more like the larger animals - like lobsters or crabs.

When I was in Malaysia, some locals caught a giant centepede and removed its poision fangs and kept it as a (temporary) pet. I let it run over my arm - no reaction at all; it was simply too large to be a creepy-crawly. My wife, on the other hand, wouldn't even look at it.
The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane—Marcus Aurelius

garbon

Well I'm not generally a fan of any size spider but at least if they are small, easy enough for me to ignore. Not sure how I'd ignore and/or have the courage to kill such a beast.

Side note, I once had soft shell crab tempura. I could barely eat it as when it came out it looked to me like a fried spider.

Snakes though? No problem with snakes at all. :cool:
"I've never been quite sure what the point of a eunuch is, if truth be told. It seems to me they're only men with the useful bits cut off."

I drank because I wanted to drown my sorrows, but now the damned things have learned to swim.

Malthus

Haven't had a Hive entry for a while - I'm sure you have all been waiting anxiously.  :D

How about this tuna can "find":

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/british-mom-finds-tongue-eating-parasite-tuna-article-1.2105693

Turns out to be a small one of these:

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_twFXQlXtIu4/S2PGkIu2QrI/AAAAAAAAAtA/O_GNqzatCYA/s1600-h/cymothoa_exigua.jpg

Umm-umm good.  :lol:

The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane—Marcus Aurelius

Monoriu

There is a really popular anime that is literally called Master of Bugs.  I hate bugs, and I am not watching it :yuk:

garbon

Quote from: Malthus on February 06, 2015, 04:46:44 PM
Haven't had a Hive entry for a while - I'm sure you have all been waiting anxiously.  :D

How about this tuna can "find":

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/british-mom-finds-tongue-eating-parasite-tuna-article-1.2105693

Turns out to be a small one of these:

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_twFXQlXtIu4/S2PGkIu2QrI/AAAAAAAAAtA/O_GNqzatCYA/s1600-h/cymothoa_exigua.jpg

Umm-umm good.  :lol:



What I've learned in the past year is that I can expect a lot of added protein from British goods.
"I've never been quite sure what the point of a eunuch is, if truth be told. It seems to me they're only men with the useful bits cut off."

I drank because I wanted to drown my sorrows, but now the damned things have learned to swim.

Malthus

Quote from: Monoriu on February 06, 2015, 06:58:46 PM
There is a really popular anime that is literally called Master of Bugs.  I hate bugs, and I am not watching it :yuk:

I assume that the "bugs" are actually cute little girls, rather than tounge-eating monstrosities.  ;)
The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane—Marcus Aurelius

jimmy olsen

Spider Rain! :punk:

Click the link for pics!
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/05/19/the-science-behind-australias-spooky-spider-rain/

QuoteThe science behind Australia's spooky 'spider rain'

By Sarah Kaplan May 19 at 1:09 AM

Residents of Goulburn, Australia woke this month to find their town shrouded in eerie, silken webs, while millions of tiny spiders rained down from above, local news reported.

"The whole place was covered in these little black spiderlings and when I looked up at the sun it was like this tunnel of webs going up for a couple of hundred meters into the sky," resident Ian Watson told the Sydney Morning Herald. His house looked like it had been "abandoned and taken over by spiders," he added.

Mystified by the phenomenon — and frustrated by the tiny arachnids getting caught in his beard — Watson did what anyone in his situation would do: He turned to the Internet.

"Anyone else experiencing ... millions of spiders falling from the sky right now?" he wrote on Goulburn's community Facebook page, according to the Morning Herald. "I'm 10 minutes out of town and you can clearly see hundreds of little spiders floating along with their webs and my home is covered in them. Someone call a scientist!"

It's not clear if anyone did pick up their phone, but if they had, scientists could have assured the people of Goulburn that their predicament is fairly common. Similar incidents have been documented recently in Texas and Brazil and nearby Wagga Wagga, another Australian town.

"Spider rain" happens when large groups of arachnids migrate all at once, using a technique called "ballooning." According to a 2001 study in the Journal of Arachnology, the spiders will spin out dozens of silk strands at once so that they fan out and form a triangular parachute, allowing the clever critters to catch a breeze toward new ground.

Rick Vetter, an entomologist at the University of California Riverside, told Live Science that many spiders use ballooning — usually just not all at once.

"This is going on all around us all the time. We just don't notice it, he said.

It's a useful skill to have if you're a tiny arachnid — far faster than walking on your own eight legs. According to Martyn Robinson, a naturalist at the Australian Museum, spiders can travel for miles this way.

"[Balooning] is why every continent has spiders. Even in Antarctica they regularly turn up but just die," he told the Sydney Morning Herald. "That's also why the first land animals to arrive on new islands formed by volcanic activity are usually spiders."

When the aerial arachnids land, their silk balloons wind up draped over the landscape. This effect, sometimes called "angel hair," also happens after heavy rains or floods, Robinson said. Spiders that live in the ground will throw silk "snag lines" into the air and use them to haul themselves up out of the waterlogged earth. When huge numbers of spiders escape drowning this way, their criss-crossing "silk roads" weave a shroud over trees, grass and sometimes buildings.

The effect rarely lasts long, but it gives ordinary buildings and fields a distinctly haunted look. Which means that lots of people are ready to forgo the scientific explanation for an otherworldly one. People who believe in UFOs often cite "angel hair" incidents as evidence.

Last fall, Roberto Pinotti, the president of Italy's National UFO Center, spoke to the BBC about his own angel hair sighting, a 1954 incident in Florence.

"I remember, in broad daylight, seeing the roofs of the houses in Florence covered in this white substance for one hour and, like snow, it just evaporated," he said. The substance appeared at the same time that spectators at a local soccer game spotted several strange objects in the sky above the stadium, and Pinotti is not convinced that spiders were to blame.

"Of course I know about the migrating spiders hypothesis — it's pure nonsense. It's an old story and also a stupid story," Pinotti told the BBC.

But astronomer James McGaha, who works at the Center for Inquiry's Grassland Observatory and works to debunk paranormal theories, said much the same thing about Pinotti's beliefs.

"It's an absolutely silly idea. Science totally rejects this idea," he said of the UFO explanation.

"This was actually caused by young spiders spinning webs, very, very thin webs," he told the BBC. "As some of this stuff breaks off and falls to the ground, this all seems magical of course. ... But I'm fairly confident that's what happened that day."
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Faye: Ordinary. The kind of beautiful, dangerous ordinary that you just can't leave alone.
Jet: I see.
Faye: Like an angel from the underworld. Or a devil from Paradise.
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