The Human Centipede II Trailer Is the Most Revolting Film Preview Of All Time

by Julie Miller

From: http://www.movieline.com/

“There’s nothing to worry about,” a mental health professional explains in the latest trailer for The Human Centipede II as he attempts to comfort the mother of Martin, Tom Six’s latest deranged medical mastermind. Of course, there is always something to worry about when your protagonist is a squat sexual deviant who fantasizes about stitching 12 people together in the most nauseating fashion imaginable, and even more so when you know that audience members at last week’s premiere were so disgusted by the vile images before them that some vomited in the theater while others just passed out. So yes, you should worry, and if your stomach is strong enough, you should cautiously click through to watch the grossest movie trailer of all time.

It’s not exactly nauseating because of what is shown but because of what is implied via the images inside this 120 second Centipede sequel sneak peak. Blunt knives. An overweight loner (Laurence R. Harvey) who is bizarrely obsessed with Six’s first film The Human Centipede and determined to build his own 12-pede.

(The fact that he wears a lab coat while working as a parking garage attendant and lovingly fingers stills from the original film will not help his case in court.) A third party describing centipedes as phallic symbols. Dull knives, cleavers and a funnel. Bound and gagged future ‘pede members writhing in terror. Incision marks drawn in Sharpie. Screams.

Verdict: If you can barely make it through this two-minute promo without gagging (like me), you probably won’t be running to theaters on October 7 to see The Human Centipede II (Full Sequence) on opening day.
[via Yahoo!]

Miami Invaded By Giant, House-Eating Snails

by NPR Staff
from: http://www.npr.org/

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Enlarge Bobbi Zimmerman /AP

A worker displays two giant African land snails. For the third time since 1966, the snails are invading the US.

September 17, 2011

In southwest Miami, a small subdivision is being called "ground zero" of an invasion by a destructive, non-native species.

"It's us against the snails," Richard Gaskalla, head of plant industry for Florida's Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, tells weekends on All Things Considered host Guy Raz.

That's the Giant African Land Snail, to be precise. They can grow to be 10 inches long. They leave a slimy trail of excrement wherever they go. They harbor the microscopic rat-lung worm, which can transmit meningitis to humans. And they will literally eat your house.

"They'll attach to the side of the house and eat the stucco off the side of the house," Gaskalla says. The snails are also attracted to garbage and pet food that's been left out.

Giant African Land Snails are restricted in the US. Gaskalla says people often smuggle them into the country in their pockets, because they make popular novelty pets.

"Back in 1965 we had an introduction that was traced back to an elementary-aged child that had put two of them in his pocket in Hawaii and brought them back to Miami," Gaskalla says. "Seventeen-thousand snails, a million dollars, and ten years, we eradicated them."

A more recent introduction several years ago was traced to small religious sects in Miami, where the snails are believed to harbor healing properties.

"A young woman had come in with some stomach ailments, and her mother said she had been fed the juices of a live snail as a healing rite," Gaskalla says.

"That's not in my medicine chest," he adds.

Authorities are asking residents not to handle the creatures. Anyone who finds a suspicious snail is advised to call the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services help line at 888-397-1517. Workers or volunteers will ID and collect the snails before taking them to be killed in a freezer.

"That's sort of a kinder, gentler way to get rid of them," Gaskalla explains.

Fire ants assemble as a 'super-organism'

By Katharine Gammon
From http://www.physorg.com/

Enlarge
Ants float because of the buoyancy of the air bubbles trapped next to their bodies. A thin layer of air can be seen around its antennae and body as well. Credit: Ant Laboratory, Georgia Institute of Technology

The ants may go marching one by one, but they end up forming a superstructure of thousands -- and together they can form a raft that stretches the boundaries of the laws of physics, according to new research released today.

Ants have exoskeletons that are naturally hydrophobic, or water repellant. A single ant can walk on water because of the buoyancy of the air bubbles trapped next to its body, and the water's own surface tension. However, when thousands of ants stand on top of each other, their multiplied weight should cause them to sink. But for years, biologists have observed fire ant colonies floating down flood plains and rivers in their native South America.

For the first time, a group of engineers has attacked the question of ant flotation from a physics perspective. Ants float as a group because they can harness the power of nearby air bubbles. Grasping each other's mandibles or front legs with a force 400 times their body weight, the ants are able to trap small pockets of air between them -- like a group floatation device.

"The ants are so tightly knit together, that air pockets form between the water and the ants, and water cannot penetrate through any part," said Nathan Mlot, a graduate student at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta and one of the study's authors.

The bottom layer of ants rests on top of the water's surface, and others pile on above them. Even when they do get submerged, the pockets of air bring them back to the surface quickly -- and allow them to breathe. When they get submerged, the ants flex their muscles in unison to form a tighter weave.

To understand exactly how the structure worked, the researchers took a raft of several thousand ants and dropped it in liquid nitrogen, immediately freezing it. Then they were able to look at the structure on an ant-by-ant level under an electron-scanning microscope. "We were surprised at just how waterproof raft was -- its ability to repel water and keep afloat," said Mlot.

What if you want to drown the ants? Just add soap to the water, which greatly reduces its surface tension of water and sinks the raft, said Mlot. "With soap, the ants will drown within a matter of seconds, whereas they can survive for days or even weeks on the raft otherwise."

Enlarge

When fire ants are gathered into a group, they have some of the same properties as a liquid, like the ability to flow from one container to another. Credit: Ant Laboratory, Georgia Institute of Technology

To test some of the behavioral dynamics inside the pancake-shaped raft, the researchers painstakingly picked ants one by one from the top of the structure. Soon, a new one would climb from the bottom to keep the raft the same thickness.

"We know that self-assembly and self-healing are attributes of living organisms, and we have seen that ant rafts develop these on a macro scale," said Mlot. The study was published today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"Each ant does one tiny job, but they can build these incredible structures," said Kenneth Ross, an entomologist with the University of Georgia who was not involved in the work. Ross says that the rafts include not only worker ants, but also the queen and her brood -- the reproductive cells of the giant superorganism. From what he has seen in his research, the queen usually stays in the center of the raft, with an even tighter ball of ants around her.

This level of social organization isn't common, said Joshua King, an insect ecologist at the Central Connecticut State University, in New Britain. "This study reinforces how unique the collective behaviors of social insects are when compared to other animals."

This type of research could eventually help in many fields, from making a better rain jacket to building robots that can think. When the ants link up their mandibles and legs, they form a highly waterproof weave, which could be the basis for next-generation materials for lifejackets or boats. In addition, social insects like ants have long been the inspiration for autonomous robotics that could link up to build a larger structure.

"Ants are like little computers, acting on a few simple rules of engagement," said Mlot.

More information: -- Mlot, Tovey & Hu. 2011. Fire ants self-assemble into hydrophobic rafts to survive floods. PNAS , http://dx.doi.org/ … s.1016658108

Ants as Fluids: Physics-Inspired Biology, Micah Streiff, Nathan Mlot, Sho Shinotsuka, Alex Alexeev, David Hu, arXiv:1010.3256v1 [physics.flu-dyn] http://arxiv.org/abs/1010.3256

Abstract

Fire ants use their claws to grip diverse surfaces, including each other. As a result of their mutual adhesion and large numbers, ant colonies flow like inanimate fluids. In this sequence of films, we demonstrate how ants behave similarly to the spreading of drops, the capillary rise of menisci, and gravity-driven flow down a wall. By emulating the flow of fluids, ant colonies can remain united under stressful conditions.

Provided by Inside Science News Service (news : web)

Hundreds of prehistoric insects found intact within huge amber deposit

A 50-million-year-old amber deposit discovered in India holds a cornucopia of perfectly preserved ancient insects.

By Bryan Nelson
From http://www.mnn.com/

FROZEN IN TIME: The insects were surprisingly well preserved, with soft tissue still intact. (Photo: sulla55/Flickr)

The 1993 film "Jurassic Park" was based on the premise that scientists were able to extract dinosaur DNA from ancient mosquitoes that fed on the prehistoric reptiles and had been preserved in tree resin. That story line is science fiction, but real scientists have discovered what is being called the largest amber deposit ever found — and it's loaded with perfectly preserved ancient bugs, according to The Independent.

The deposit, which is the first to be discovered in India, is probably larger than the current record holders in the amber-rich Baltic region of Russia, Germany, Ukraine and Poland. Even more valuable than the amber itself, however, is the treasure trove of ancient insects found trapped inside. Prehistoric bees, ants, spiders and mites that become encased within the amber over 50 million years ago can now be studied in unprecedented detail.

Usually bugs found trapped in ancient amber deposits are empty shells, with just their exoskeletons preserved. Their soft inner tissues rarely survive the millennia of decay intact. That's one of the main reasons the fantasy presented in "Jurassic Park" could never become a reality. But the bugs found in the new Indian deposit are different. They're some of the best preserved specimens ever found, with surprisingly well-preserved soft tissues.

"We are able to dissolve the amber and get the specimens completely out," said professor Jes Rust of Bonn University in Germany, who pioneered the effort to uncover the insects. "This is really outstanding. It's like getting a complete dinosaur out of the amber and being able to put it under the microscope."

In reality, these 50-million-year-old bugs would have survived the extinction of the dinosaurs, and would have lived at a time before mammals evolved. Though most of the creatures are ancient species, one species of ant belongs to a genus that is still alive today in Australia.

"The amber shows, similar to an old photo, what life looked like in India just before the collision with the Asian continent. The insects trapped in the fossil resin cast a new light on the history of the sub-continent," Rust said.

In all, 700 specimens have been found in the amber so far, but scientists say they have only just scratched the surface. "There is an enormous volume of amber to be found. This is just the beginning," added Rust.

Photos of the Very Rare Pink Katydid

by Jerry James Stone, San Francisco, CA

from: http://www.treehugger.com/

Photo via Flickr

What you are looking at is the very rare and very pink katydid. First discovered back in 1887, the pink katydid is so rare that they occur once out of every 500 individuals. You have a better chance of spotting a unicorn in the wild.

Of course, the color pink alone isn't very common to the animal kingdom, flamingos aside. It's the result of a condition called erythrism, similar to the recessive gene that afflicts albino animals.

Katydids are large, leaf-shaped and usually green. They are named after a song they sing: katy did katy did katy did. Their green skin makes them somewhat hard to find for insect-chowing predators. But the pink ones are not afforded the same luxury.

While people have tried to produce pink katydids in captivity, there had been little success until last year. The New Orleans Audubon Insectarium had acquired both a pink male and a pink female katydid which resulted in a litter of new pink babies.

Like this article? Follow me on Twitter or friend me on FacebookPhoto via Flickr

Photo via Photobucket

Photo via Wikimedia Commons

Locusts invade town in Queensland, Australia

A swarm of locusts has invaded a town in Queensland, Australia, stripping much of the plantlife bare. Longreach residents said the insects started to appear last Thursday, and by the weekend had eaten most of the trees bald. The plague is said to be the biggest to hit the region in 30 years

Creepy Crawlies Up Close [PICS]

telegraph.co.uk — Amazing Scanning Electron Microscope pictures of insects and spiders.

click here to see these Alien looking bugs: Creepy Crawlies

How Ants Make Their Nest?

C2009/11/how-ants-make-their-nest/

Ants are very industrious insects in which many people in the world expressed ants’ attitude and behavior in proverbs and pithy words. In fact, in al-Quran (muslim book) itself there was already a devoted one chapter which is called an ant (an-Naml in arabic). Being a small creature with only 2 stomachs and 3 eyes, they can lift the burden of double of their weight. Let us see why the ants are very heralded by many people and cultures. This experiment has been carried out by the investigation unit at NASA in Florida, USA, in which NASA wants to see how ants make their nests.

First, ants are placed in a closed container seen as an aquarium with only a light illuminated by ultra violet (light purple representing the sun) and the transparent medium gel (having the properties of minerals and nutrients as the soil).

After a few minutes away passed, ants were beginning to work, making the holes of small colonies to help other ants move in the “land”. These ants from my opinion want to escape from the hot sun.

As a result, it forms various types of small alleys connecting roads in the soil which is indeed a very unique arts. If we see the container from afar, oh God! it is very beautiful and creative architecture. Let’s take an example of their diligence and creativity and apply in our day life. Plus, they are also seen to work closely together to achieve their goal of making their nests for comfortable.

Source: Melayu Kini

10 Most Diabolical Creepy Crawlies On Earth

Karl Fabricius - who has written 189 posts on Environmental Graffiti.

Photo: RBirtles

Evil, diabolical call them what you will, the wingless microscopic or near microscopic critters we’ve gathered together here are a veritable roll-call of the repulsive and the abhorrent. Fleas, lice, ticks, mites and bedbugs make up the minuscule menagerie, and alongside the mug shots we’ve endeavoured to explain what it is each featured pest does to us that makes it equally if not more repugnant than it looks. Feeling itchy yet? These little guys are certainly getting bloated.

10. Bedbug: 4–5 mm long

Photo via Alternative Health Journal

Ever been bitten by Bedbugs? Well, it isn’t pretty; in fact it’s excruciating. Feeding on the blood of humans and other mammals, these night-time nasties get their name from their preferred habitat of mattresses, bed frames, sofas and other furniture, and are often picked up in hotels. Although visible to the naked eye, they’re masters at moving undetected and hiding out of sight in nooks and crannies. They reach their host by crawling or by climbing the walls to the ceiling and jumping down, paratrooper style, on feeling a heat wave.

Elusive menace: Bedbug

Photo: Adam Cuerden

Like fleas, Bedbugs are attracted by warmth and CO2. Once landed on their host, they pierce the skin with two tubes, one of which injects saliva while the other sucks up blood. The bites cannot usually be felt until much later, when the welts caused are often accompanied by a severe itching as the skin reacts to the anaesthetic injected. Stress, insomnia, and in rare cases nausea are among the reactions to Bedbug infestations, which are undergoing a global resurgence. Infected? The thermal death point for these insect horrors is 45°C.

Infest! Bedbug cases are on the rise

Photo: A.L. Szalanski

9. Cat Flea: 1.5–3.3 mm long

Photo: gucic

Like other fleas, the Cat Flea – one of the most widespread on earth – is an insect with mouthparts modified for piercing skin and sucking blood – to distinctly itchy effect. Housecats are its choice host, but it also commonly infests dogs, and will bite humans – albeit without being able to breed on us. A few Cat Fleas are unlikely to cause much harm unless their host is allergic to substances in their saliva, but they can transmit other parasites and infections to pets and humans including murine typhus and tapeworm. Nasty.

Flee! It’s the Cat Flea

Photo: Used with permission from the University of Bath

8. Human Flea: 1.5–3.3 mm long

Photo: David Walker www.micscape.org

Despite its name, the Human Flea will gleefully infest a range of mammals and birds. Like all fleas, its hind legs are adapted for jumping about 130 times its own body height; its tough body is able to withstand great pressure; and it is compressed, allowing ease of movement through hairs, feathers or clothes. An adult flea’s number one objective is to find blood so that it can mate. Human Fleas can also act as ‘middlemen’ hosts for parasitic flatworms and tapeworms. No need to be a good host to these agile little suckers.

Up close and personal: Human Flea

Photo: RBirtles

7. Oriental Rat Flea: 1.5–3.3 mm long

Photo: CDC/Dr. Pratt

Although a parasite primary of rats, the Oriental Rat Flea is also a dark agent of potentially deadly diseases like bubonic plague. Transmission occurs when the offending flea first bites an infected rodent and then a human. The unsavoury pathogens are spread due to the way the flea’s mouth functions, squirting saliva or partly digested blood into the bite at the same time as sucking up blood. It should be jumping out at you by now that the Rat Flea – onetime bringer of the Black Death – can be much more than just an irritating nuisance.

Harbinger of disease: Rat Flea

Photo: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) / Janice Carr

6. Scabies Mite: 0.2–0.45 mm long

Photo: Kalumet

The name Sarcoptes Scabiei is a bit of a giveaway of the sin this critter commits as it quite literally gets under our skin: the skin infection scabies. The fertilised female of this pernicious parasite tunnels into the skin, laying eggs in the ever-lengthening S-shaped burrow she digs using her mouthparts and blade-like front legs. The larvae then hatch in 3-10 days, climb out onto the skin’s surface, roam about the place, and turn into nymphs, before maturing into adult Mites to begin the cycle all over again.

Under the microscope: Scabies Mite

Photo via liberty4you

All this moving about on and inside the skin causes some pretty intense itching, but it’s the presence of the eggs that seals the scabies deal, bringing about a massive allergic reaction and yet more often unbearable itching. The resultant scratching of this rash can severely damage the skin, particularly through the introduction of infective bacteria, which may lead to nasty secondary infections like impetigo. Making matters worse, Scabies Mites are easily spread through the house by skin contact with carriers, clothing and bedding.

Scabby? Could be Sarcoptes Scabiei

Photo: Joel Mills

5. Body Louse: 1–3 mm long

Photo via Impact Pest Control

It’s time to deal with the true cooties, beginning with Body Lice. While indistinguishable to look at from Head Lice – indeed the two interbreed under lab conditions – in their natural state Body Lice have evolved to attach their eggs to clothes. These dress rather hair styled insect parasites are not only an annoyance due to the intense itching they cause, but are also vectors of diseases such as epidemic typhus and louse-borne relapsing fever, whose recurring symptoms include fever and chills. If in doubt get boiling your linen.

Engorged: Body Louse on human skin after blood feeding

Photo courtesy of Richard Webb

4. Head Louse: 1–3 mm long

Photo: Department of Biology, Gettysburg College

Next up is the Head Louse, the foul parasite that spends its entire life on the human scalp feeding solely on our blood and laying eggs called nits. This light-shunning vampire is so specialised, its stumpy legs are unable to even walk capably on flat surfaces. Its mouthparts are highly adapted for piercing skin and bloodsucking – when it may also excrete dark red faeces. Nice. Infesting new hosts usually comes about via head-to-head contact. About the only nice thing you can say about the Head Louse is that it is not a known transmitter of disease.

Itchy, flaky scalp? Male Head Louse

Photo: KostaMumcuoglu

3. Pubic Louse: 1.1–1.8 mm long

Photo: Creepy Dreadful Wonderful Parasites

Pubic Lice, commonly known as crabs, are infamous for infesting the – ahem – human genitals, though they may also live on other areas with hair, including eyelashes, armpits and beards. While sharing the flattened body and claw-like legs of its cousins – ideal for crawling from hair to hair – the Pubic Louse is otherwise distinct in appearance and more distantly related. Still, this is one mean sucker as those infested will testify – albeit discreetly. Infection usually comes through sexual intercourse. To ensure full removal of nits, shaving is advised.

Nice claws: Pubic Louse or crab

Photo: PHIL

2. Sheep Tick: approx 5mm

Photo: Richard Bartz

Last to grace the stage, it’s the not so loveable ticks, represented first up by the Sheep Tick. Small arachnids similar to mites, ticks are external parasites, living by feeding on the blood of various animals as well as humans. Like others of their kind, Sheep Ticks are found lurking in tall grass and shrubs where they lie in wait. They then attach themselves to passing hosts by inserting their cutting mandibles and feeding tubes into the skin, with backward pointing teeth-like spikes acting as an anchor. The Sheep Tick is an agent Lyme disease in humans.

Tick love: Male Sheep Tick copulating with a much larger female

Photo: WHO

1. Deer Tick: approx 5mm

Photo: University of Wisconsin

However, the Deer Tick that is by far the most notorious vector for Lyme Disease, a condition transmitted by the bite of infected ticks whose more serious symptoms may involve the joints, heart and central nervous system. Given its name due to its habit of parasitizing the white-tailed deer, the female Deer Tick latches onto a host and drinks its blood for several days, then once engorged, drops off and overwinters on the forest floor. Naturally this little glutton has a taste for humans too. A suitably disgusting, not to say dangerous, critter on which to end the post.

Ticked all the boxes? Deer Tick

Photo: NOAA

Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12

1 Million Spiders Make Golden Silk for Rare Cloth

• By Hadley Leggett

A rare textile made from the silk of more than a million wild spiders goes on display today at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.

To produce this unique golden cloth, 70 people spent four years collecting golden orb spiders from telephone poles in Madagascar, while another dozen workers carefully extracted about 80 feet of silk filament from each of the arachnids. The resulting 11-foot by 4-foot textile is the only large piece of cloth made from natural spider silk existing in the world today.

“Spider silk is very elastic, and it has a tensile strength that is incredibly strong compared to steel or Kevlar,” said textile expert Simon Peers, who co-led the project. “There’s scientific research going on all over the world right now trying to replicate the tensile properties of spider silk and apply it to all sorts of areas in medicine and industry, but no one up until now has succeeded in replicating 100 percent of the properties of natural spider silk.”

Peers came up with the idea of weaving spider silk after learning about the French missionary Jacob Paul Camboué, who worked with spiders in Madagascar during the 1880s and 1890s. Camboué built a small, hand-driven machine to extract silk from up to 24 spiders at once, without harming them.

“Simon managed to build a replica of this 24-spider-silking machine that was used at the turn of the century,” said Nicholas Godley, who co-led the project with Peers. As an experiment, the pair collected an initial batch of about 20 spiders. “When we stuck them in the machine and started turning it, lo and behold, this beautiful gold-colored silk started coming out,” Godley said.

Father Comboué, who one historical text erroneously calls Father Comboné, had a partner in designing his machine, M. Nogué. Together, they got quite a spider silk fabric industry going in Madagascar and even exhibited “a complete set of bed hangings” at the Paris Exposition of 1898. That fabric has since been lost, but the exhibition brought them some attention, excerpted below.

“It should be said that the female halabe allows herself to be relieved of her silken store with exemplary docility and this in spite of the fact that she is distinguished for her ferocity; her usual treatment of the males who pay her court is to eat them and she feasts without compunction on members of her own sex weaker than herself. M Nogue’s apparatus consists of a sort of stocks arranged to pin down on their backs a dozen spiders. The spiders accept this imprisonment with resignation and lie perfectly quiet while the silken thread issuing from their bodies is rapidly wound on to a reel by means of a cleverly devised machine worked by hand.” — Great Britain Board of Trade Journal

“The first experiments of Father Comboné were made in the simplest manner. The spiders were imprisoned in match boxes and by slightly compressing the abdomen he managed to extract and wind upon a little reel turned by hand it thread that sometimes attained a length of 500 yards… it is to the ingenuity of M. Nogue, one of the sub directors, that we owe the apparatus which permits the thread to be wound mechanically and to be twisted and doubled in the quickest and most practical manner. This is done by means of a curious little machine, not easy to describe, in which the spiders are imprisoned by the throat while undergoing the operation. Young Malagasy girls go daily to a park near the school to gather three or four hundred spiders which they carry in osier baskets with wooden covers to be divested of their webs… Generally after having submitted to the reeling operation the spiders are put back in the park for a couple of weeks… [The silk's] color when first spun is a beautiful gold and it requires no carding or preparation of any sort before being woven. Will this be the silk of the future?” — The Literary Digest

But to make a textile of any significant size, the silk experts had to drastically scale up their project. “Fourteen thousand spiders yields about an ounce of silk,” Godley said, “and the textile weighs about 2.6 pounds. The numbers are crazy.”

Researchers have long been intrigued by the unique properties of spider silk, which is stronger than steel or Kevlar but far more flexible, stretching up to 40 percent of its normal length without breaking. Unfortunately, spider silk is extremely hard to mass produce: Unlike silk worms, which are easy to raise in captivity, spiders have a habit of chomping off each other’s heads when housed together.

To get as much silk as they needed, Godley and Peers began hiring dozens of spider handlers to collect wild arachnids and carefully harness them to the silk-extraction machine. “We had to find people who were willing to work with spiders,” Godley said, “because they bite.”

By the end of the project, Godley and Peers extracted silk from more than 1 million female golden orb spiders, which are abundant throughout Madagascar and known for the rich golden color of their silk. Because the spiders only produce silk during the rainy season, workers collected all the spiders between October and June.

Then an additional 12 people used hand-powered machines to extract the silk and weave it into 96-filament thread. Once the spiders had been milked, they were released into back into the wild, where Godley said it takes them about a week to regenerate their silk. “We can go back and re-silk the same spiders,” he said. “It’s like the gift that never stops giving.”

Of course, spending four years to produce a single textile of spider silk isn’t very practical for scientists trying to study the properties of spider silk or companies that want to manufacture the fabric for use as a biomedical scaffold or an alternative to Kevlar armor. Several groups have tried inserting spider genes into bacteria (or even cows and goats) to produce silk, but so far, the attempts have been only moderately successful.

Part of the reason it’s so hard to generate spider silk in the lab is that it starts out as a liquid protein that’s produced by a special gland in the spider’s abdomen. Using their spinnerets, spiders apply a physical force to rearrange the protein’s molecular structure and turn it into solid silk.

“When we talk about a spider spinning silk, we’re talking about how the spider applies forces to produce a physical transformation from liquid to solid,” said spider silk expert Todd Blackledge of the University of Akron, who was not involved in creating the textile. “Scientists simply can’t replicate that as well as a spider does it. Every year we’re getting closer and closer to being able to mass-produce it, but we’re not there yet.”

For now, it seems we’ll have to be content with one incredibly beautiful cloth, graciously provided by more than a million spiders.

Images: 1) AMNH/R. Mickens 2) Nicholas Godley and Simon Peers

Giant Centipede Catches and Eats a Bat

Video documentary of a giant centipede catching a bat.

5 Insects You Should Eat But Probably Wouldn’t: Insects on a Stick

There are millions of insect species known worldwide. Only 1500 or so are reported edible. This post reviews only 5 of those you could eat and how they are cooked throughout the world.

Entomophagy (a Greek word which means “insect eating”) is the practice of eating insects as food. While it is quite an ordinary thing in most Eastern cultures, it is considered a taboo in Europe and North America which may seem odd considering how plentiful and protein-packed insects are.

So unless you believe in the saying “You are what you eat“, you might probably consider adding a few insects in your daily menu:

1. Scorpions on Stick:

The so-called ‘desert lobster has a poisonous stinger at the end of a jointed tail. Scorpions are often cooked impaled on a stick, then dunked in boiling oil – they are said to have crunchy texture, but taste like nothing, “like salted peanut shells”.

Useful? Due to its poisonous nature and unusual look, the scorpions are often believed to have plenty of healing properties: scorpion can eliminate the body’s inner heat, treat paralysis, rheumatism, convulsion twitches, tetanus, cancer and hepatitis B.

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2. Silkworms

Deep-fried silkworms have a distinctive, yet difficult to describe odor and an after-taste similar to wet, decomposing leaves. The outer shell is tough and should not be eaten.

Useful? Silkworms are a high source of protein, iron, magnesium, calcium, sodium and Vitamins B1, B2, and B3. They are good for children who suffer from malnutrition and as a supplement for pregnant women.

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3. Cicadas

Cicadas look much like crickets but are differentiated by their mating call. Like scorpions, cicadas taste like nothing and have cool crunchy texture. The inner part is soft like the white part of a boiled egg. Wings and legs can get stuck in your teeth.

Useful? Cicadas are said to be rich in protein and Vitamins B1, B2, and B3.

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4. Centipedes

Centipedes are long and leggy, and look and taste not really good (based on other people’s words).

Useful? Centipedes are believed to heal weak kidneys, backache and impotence.

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5. Beetles / Bugs

Before cooking or eating a bug, be sure to remove the hard wings on the back and “lightly squeeze the head between your thumb and index finger to push out the intestines” (tip).

Useful? Bugs are believed to be antidiuretic (i.e. limits the formation of urine) that can cure kids of bed-wetting and the elderly from making too many trips to the toilet.

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