Hey, Fedi. I have a favour to ask you.

[beaiouns@is.nota.live]

@ShaulaEvans This is the coolest bug I've seen recently (article by @grrlscientist ): https://www.forbes.com/sites/grrlscientist/2025/10/04/half-male-half-female-spider-discovered-in-thailand-is-new-to-science/

[dazzr@social.tchncs.de]

@Anke @ShaulaEvans Yup.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Mi0D-ya4Wk

[queenofpalms@mastodon.social]

@ShaulaEvans As part of my degree, I had to take an entomology course. We were required to use a dichotomous key to identify an insect. My assigned insect was a cockroach. I failed the assignment bc the key said it was a cricket even though I knew it was a cockroach. I made an A minus in that class.

[tadbithuman@mastodon.social]

@ShaulaEvans have you asked @futurebird ?

[eetschrijver@mastodon.social]

@annehargreaves
I read this first in a Robert A. Heinlein novel, but I'm not sure whether he authored it.
@benroyce @ShaulaEvans

[catselbow@fosstodon.org]

@annehargreaves @benroyce @ShaulaEvans

Then there's Ogden Nash's short poem about fleas:

Adam had 'em

[bytebro@mastodonapp.uk]

@annehargreaves

Close to my recollection...

"Big fleas have lesser fleas
Upon their backs to bite 'em.
Lesser fleas have smaller fleas
And so ad infinitum"

@benroyce @ShaulaEvans

[curtadams@urbanists.social]

@annehargreaves @benroyce @ShaulaEvans

It's a punched up part of "Vermin", by Jonathan Swift. Can't say who is responsible for the rephrasing. https://libquotes.com/jonathan-swift/quote/lby8o4e

[semilanceata@mastodon.social]

@ShaulaEvans (Haven't read through all the replies, so maybe it has been said before.. )

Mechanical gears used to be thought of as a man made invention, but there is a species of plant hoppers that uses them as part of their jumping technique!

Prof. Malcolm Burrows from Cambridge University explains it in this video: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8fyUOxD2EA

[cptbutton@dice.camp]

@annehargreaves @benroyce @ShaulaEvans

Augustus De Morgan

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siphonaptera_(poem)

[adamstuartsmith@sauropods.win]

@WizardOfDocs @inj4n @lavievagabonde @ShaulaEvans It was a moth. But it would have been perfection if Grace Hopper had found a grass hopper.

[lolcat@digipres.club]

@ShaulaEvans

A bug that's sometimes called the rarest in the world, and also happens to be HUGE, is native to a remote 1,877' rock pyramid way out in the ocean, east of Australia.

Not a lot of interesting facts about the bug itself (though there are some!), it's the story of the presumed extinction, rediscovery, subsequent preservation and breeding, and the extreme location that makes this an interesting bug story.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dryococelus

[annehargreaves@ioc.exchange]

@CurtAdams @benroyce @ShaulaEvans Ah, thanks! The version I remember is how my mother used to tell it.

[annehargreaves@ioc.exchange]

@cptbutton @benroyce @ShaulaEvans Thanks!

[bytebro@mastodonapp.uk]

@annehargreaves

I did a Wiki search, and it came up with this...

<wiki>
"Siphonaptera" is a name used[1] to refer to the following rhyme by Augustus De Morgan (Siphonaptera being the biological order to which fleas belong):

Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite 'em,
And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum.
And the great fleas themselves, in turn, have greater fleas to go on;
While these again have greater still, and greater still, and so on.[2]

The rhyme appears in De Morgan's A Budget of Paradoxes (1872) along with a discussion of the possibilities that all particles may be made of clustered smaller particles, "and so down, for ever", and that planets and stars may be particles of some larger universe, "and so up, for ever".[2]
</wiki>

All here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siphonaptera_%28poem%29?wprov=sfla1

@benroyce @ShaulaEvans

[mux@swingset.social]

@WizardOfDocs
Truly.
@afewbugs @ShaulaEvans

[gumnos@mastodon.bsd.cafe]

@ShaulaEvans

while I'm sure you'll get plenty of ant-facts and your friend likely already knows about the bullet-ant, but it's an amazing creature with the (purportedly) most painful sting of any insect. These suckers grow to over an inch and are unsettling to watch. I saw them plenty of times as a tween when our family lived in Peru (they were called "Izula ants" there, with a smaller "cousin Izula ants" also in the area). Word-of-mouth cautioned me from ever interacting with their business-end.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullet_ant#Relationship_with_humans

[robcubbon@mastodon.art]

@ShaulaEvans
@StrepsipZerg should be able to help you out!