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Bugs, Insects & Creepy Crawlies

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punychicken

Gone But Not Forgotten
(ACCOUNT RETIRED)
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mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/Leonardo/isast/articles/duprat/duprat.html
Link dead.

https://web.archive.org/web/2002021...ls/Leonardo/isast/articles/duprat/duprat.html
Archived version via Wayback Machine

"Since the early 1980s, artist Hubert Duprat has been utilizing insects to construct some of his "sculptures." By removing caddis fly larvae from their natural habitat and providing them with precious materials, he prompts them to manufacture cases that resemble jewelers' creations. Information theory, as explained by biologists such as Jacques Monod and Henri Atlan, helps us understand what seems to be the insect's aesthetic behavior. The activities of the caddis worm, as manipulated by Hubert Duprat, are prompted by the "noise"---beads, pearls and 18-karat gold pieces---introduced by the artist into the insect's environment."


"Hubert Duprat's ... experiments clearly illustrate the outstanding level that has been reached by the caddis fly larva's building art."

But is it art??
 
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WOW what a wondeful idea!.. i wish id thought of it... i also understnad that in the far east they encrust some live insects with jewles and have em wandering about on mini chains on their clothes!... but thats a bit cruel realy.. but cadis fly lava what a good idea..
 
There was something on TV last night about an artist who leaves boards (or panes of glass) coated with carbon in the countryside. When various forms of wild life move over it they leave trails and footprints that he then displays as art!

(I was only watching with one eye, so can't recall any more detail.)
 
To be honest, I found caddis fly houses terribly impressive already, but I don't know if it counts as art if an insect does it for you...
 
sidecar_jon said:
"Art is what you can get away with"
Click to expand...

I have an Unmade Bed which I think has potential... :D
 
rynner said:
I have an Unmade Bed which I think has potential... :D
Click to expand...

yes try offering that to Pat in the "Market Street Mews" and see waht she says..,, it'll be a short answer im sure..
 
Unmade bed? Pah! I've got three hundredweight of tinned shite looking for a good home...
 
three hundred weight!... at gold prices curently ur a millionare many time over... u realy must go and see the bank to make a deposite.
 
rynner said:
I have an Unmade Bed which I think has potential... :D
Click to expand...
It's been done. At the Tate, I think. Until a couple of men stripped off and had a pillow fight on it.

Art is what you can get a grant from the Australia Council for.
 
anome said:
Art is what you can get a grant from the Australia Council for.
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do u think i coul dget one?..cos the Cornish arts only give money to people who have it already and thier mates.
 
I think you actually have to have lived in Australia at some point. Possibly even when you make your application. Other than that, I don't know if there are any restrictions.
 
many years ago (really!!) I read a pond life study book in which it was suggested that the caddis fly lava will build out of anything put in its habitat that is of suitable size, with illustrations of different cases from different habitats, and the author went on to encourage the reader to introduce small bits of coloured glass, brick and tile etc. to your new found friend and watch the results. So, nothing new or original there then!
 
I'm with IJ on this one -a caddis fly larva case is damned impressive and a work of art in it's own right. Fiddling about with one is superfluous.
 
I used to splosh about in my wellies for hours like a mentalist trying to find them. I'd scoop them up, look at them to see if there were any really nice ones then put them back.

Those were the days.
 
sidecar_jon said:
"Art is what you can get away with"
Click to expand...

Sorry, mate, but art is what you can get paid for...

10CC: 'Art for art's sake, money for God's sake'... says it all, really....
 
Inverurie Jones said:
I used to splosh about in my wellies for hours like a mentalist trying to find them. I'd scoop them up, look at them to see if there were any really nice ones then put them back.

Those were the days.
Click to expand...

Splosh!

I thought that word had died, and gone to dictionary heaven...:D
 
Gambling with crickets?
HONG KONG (AFP) - Hong Kong's obsession with gambling reached unusual extremes with the arrest of 115 people for betting on insect fights, police said.

The city is well known as a haven for China's horse racing and soccer gamblers, but raids on a club in the seedy Mongkok district of Kowloon broke a betting syndicate gambled on battles between huge crickets.

Senior Inspector Angus Yeung Fu-yin of the Special Duties Squad in Mongkok said the cricket fights, the first officers have uncovered in five years, amazed even police.

"Gambling of this type is very rare here although it was very popular in the old days, so we were very surprised when we first heard about it," Yeung said, adding that illegal gambling on dogfights and bird fights is common.

"Only older people continue to do it," he said.

The gamblers, aged from 30 to 80, were arrested in the midst of what was billed as a championship between insects from Hong Kong, nearby Macau and Guangzhou in neighbouring China.

Police said the men were not thought to have links with organised criminals, called triads here.

Officers seized nearly 200 crickets, 8,000 Hong Kong dollars (1,026 US dollars) and gambling paraphernalia, including small baskets that were used to house the insects and bamboo sticks used to agitate them.

Cricket fighting can be traced back to the Tang dynasty of 618-907 and had long been confined to aristocrats, senior officials and wealthy merchants. Winning brought honour while losing meant shame, according to the South China Morning Post.

Traders of the battling insects hunt out the fiercest crickets and devote many hours training them, the Post said. A champion cricket can cost up to 20,000 yuan (2,600 US dollars) each, it said.

While the prize money for cricket-fighting rarely exceeds a couple of thousand dollars, winners of fights between dogs can scoop up to a million dollars, according to the Chinese-language Sun newspaper.
Click to expand...
 
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EDIT

This a general thread for discussion on insects that do not necessarily fit under Cryptozoology i.e. they're not a new species and or a rediscovered species.


Thanks, TheQuixote

------



I found a couple of huge insects on the web in the last week, I realise these ones have already been discovered but makes me shudder to think there might be bigger ones of these out there.

www.hornissenschutz.de/manda.htm
Link dead.
Archived version via The Wayback Machine
https://web.archive.org/web/20230921132046/http://www.hornissenschutz.de/

This one could give you nightmares, Stupidly Huge Centipede and its eating a mouse so be warned.

The centipede looks prehistoric.
 
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Re: Huge Insects

nohopesnodreams said:
I found a couple of huge insects on the web in the last week, I realise these ones have already been discovered but makes me shudder to think there might be bigger ones of these out there.

Huge Wasp

This one could give you nightmares, Stupidly Huge Centipede and its eating a mouse so be warned.

The centipede looks prehistoric.
Click to expand...

:shock: Hornets freak me out, we used to get loads of them in our last house every summer. They're just toooo big, and they're impossible to get out of the house.
I remember hitting one last year at least 6 times after it steadfastly refused to leave our bedroom and forget about using bug spray, they're immune to it!

How the hell did that Centipede grow so large?
 
Maybe a 'Not During Lunch' warning should be posted.
I don't normally get creeped out by things - but that did it. :shock:
 
BlackRiverFalls said:
You didn't say it was a cute mouse :shock:
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A pet mouse, you mean.

According to the all-knowing internet, those things do indeed eat small rodents in the wild, although they are generally given a diet of crickets and roaches when kept in captivity.

(Of course, in the wild they don't have some sick voyeur pushing tame mice in their direction then filming the result for a laugh. They have to catch their own prey.)
 
I think insects and creepy crawlies get less creepy as they get bigger. I'd freak right out if a normal sized spider ran over my hand but a tarantula wouldn't bother me. A normal wasp would scare me a bit but for some reason that huge hornet looks almost cute.

I'd make an exception for that huge centipede though. Eugh!
 
(frivolous post alert)/!\
A giant wasp about to bite somebody on the arse.[/u]
 
As far as I know what keeps the size of insects down is their way of breathing. They got these thing tubes going into their body, relying in oxygen "seeping in" through the tubes. But that only works if the tubes are short or there is not enough seeping, therefore the insects stay small. But as far as I can tell, that only means their cross section should be short. So an insect would not be able to expand much in a cube-shape kind of way, but in a rectangular way there should be no limit. In other words a thin but damned long insect should be okay.
 
HUUUUGE Fly

I know this isn't a crypid but you guys would be the best to help me work out what the $#@^ I saw.

I saw a fly the other day that was massive. And i mean MASSIVE.
Looked just like any old big fly, about 1.5cm long, except it had membranous wings a good 5cm long. They weren't big wings like on a katydid, nor were they skinny wings like on a dragonfly. In fact, they looked just like cicada wings. I know cicadas though and this was no cicada. I've looked through every insect identifier I can find online and I can't find it. Everything with wings like this has a long body like a dragonfly and this did not have a long body.
What the hell did I see?

For identification purposes, you should know that I live in south-eastern NSW, just south of Sydney, which has a temperate climate. This thing was seen about a month back, so it would have been late March, which is mid-Autumn here. Any help?
 
I have a memory/dream I remember from childhood about a huge moth I saw.This creature was about 4" long & 3" wide with wings closed.It was so heavy it could barely fly & then but just a few feet.I picked it up & it's wings seemed to leave a dusty sort of desposit on my fingers.Odd..It's so vivid a memory I can't image it's just a dream,but then such an insect couldn't exist..could it?
 
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