Fans of Awsomeness Behold the Pseudoscorpion

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I found one of these guys in my lamp the other day. After getting some magnification on the little fella I knew I was looking at an arachnid. It had claws like a scorpion, but no scorpion tail, and it was spinning a bit of silk like a spider. A little searching on the internet gave me the name of this creature. It's a pseudoscorpion, and everything about it is great. Pseudoscorpions live all over the US, but you may never see them because their maximum size is about 2 centimeters. Psuedoscorpions live entirely on a diet of things I hate, like flea larvae, carpet mites, clothing moth larvae and small flies, which is the first cool thing I discovered about them. They grab these pests with their venomous claws and devour them. Yes, I said "venomous claws." The pseudoscorpion is a very efficient creature. Where a scorpion has to grab its prey and then try to sting with its tail, the pseudoscorpion has its venom conveniently located in the claws. Pretty clever, eh? (BTW, they can't actually bite humans. Just very small things.) Another great thing about pseudoscorpions: though wingless they get around by air travel. How? They hitch a ride on a winged insect, like this:

The best part of this is that the pseudoscorpion might even be able to eat her mode of transportation once she gets where she's going. 

Suffice it to say I have a new favorite arachnid. 

Zombie Ants? How Crazy is This?

This is pretty interesting. Science Now has an article about zombie ants whose brains are taken over by a fungal thing. An excerpt:

Zombies have roamed the Earth for at least 48 million years. Zombie ants, that is. Today, Ophiocordyceps fungi are well known for taking over the minds of ants such as the Camponotus leonardi worker pictured above. Once infected, an ant wanders away from its colony, bites down on a leaf vein near the forest floor, and dies—creating ideal conditions for the fungal fruiting body that sprouts from its corpse. 

I'll admit that bad things happening to ants makes me a little happy, as we have horrible ants in Texas.  Specifically, we have fire ants in Texas. I hope they all get zombied.

 

Waitomo Glow Worm Caves

Waitomo, New Zealand's caves are home to a fabulous species of gnats, called Arachnocampa Luminosa, that, in their larval stage, create gorgeous displays that resemble a starry sky in the caves' interior.


Great Caves of the World

Fastest Binary Star

A binary star is a pair of twin stars that orbit one another in space around their shared center of mass. Recently astrophysicists, or star studiers, have discovered a binary system called HM Cancri has an orbit of just 5.4 minutes. This is the fastest known orbit of any star pair, which correlates to a speed of 310 miles per second. Much faster, and they would turn into an Ia supernova, which really just means a huge star explosion. No reports back, just yet, as to whether they have tacos that far out in space.

Clara Rockmore Plays "The Swan" On Theremin

Clara Rockmore, the greatest virtuouso of the Theremin, was an advocate for the instrument being taken seriously. She was born in Lithuania in 1911, and was admitted to the Imperial Conservatory in St. Petersburg at age five-- still the youngest person ever admitted. She studied violin but had to give it up due to a medical condition, but she then switched to Theremin, at the time a new instrument.

The theremin never really caught on, partly because of the incredible difficulty of playing the instrument with any accuracy. It relies on relative placement of the hands in thin air. The other factor was its association with horror movies, like in this clip:

Of course, those of us who must fight Wickidity find such musical interludes relaxing. Which only serves to remind us that she who fights Witches, must be ever on guard against becoming Wicked herself.

The theremin has enjoyed a bit of a geek-based revival in recent years, as a person can actually construct a basic one at home rather cheaply and easily. There are people, in fact, who will make virtually anything into a theremin, like these guys:

Theremin - An Electronic Odyssey