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EartherConservationCity Dwellers Could Be Key to Saving Monarch Butterflies From Extinction
Since 2014, conservationists have been trying to secure protections for the monarch butterfly under the Endangered Species Act. The butterfly—whose signature black-and-white speckled orange wings are impossible to miss—has seen its numbers drop by 80 percent in North America over the last 20 years. New research, however, paints a promising future for the species in … Continued
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Tech NewsSploidWatching a Butterfly Hatch Looks Beautifully Alien
One of the wildest things that happens in nature is caterpillars go to sleep one day and then transform into a damn butterfly after a month. I thought that as a kid, and I still think it now. Like, that’s the closest thing we’ve got to actual sorcery on Earth. But it’s just an egg … Continued
By Casey Chan -
Tech NewsSploidVideo: The metamorphosis of a caterpillar into a monarch butterfly
Here’s the life cycle of a monarch butterfly. From the wild green creepy critter crawler caterpillar to the unassuming cocoon to the beautifully complex and intricate butterfly itself. We get to see the entire process and it’s like a magic trick, enter one way and exit completely different. Nature is always the best magician. SPLOID … Continued
By Casey Chan -
io9Butterfly-Collecting Was The Perfect Cover For This Historic Spy
We love real-life spy stories. The gadgetry! The clandestine meetings! The coded messages! But thus far, most spy stories have glossed over the role of butterfly-collecting. That was a terrible mistake. Commenter spagornasm shared this real history of a spy working in the early 1900s — and the unexpectedly important role that butterfly-collecting and birdwatching … Continued
By Ria Misra -
Tech NewsButterfleye Keeps an Eye on Your House For Safety and For Fun
Gone are the days of nanny cams embedded in teddy bears or CCTV arrays mounted outside your front door. The new home camera Butterfleye represents a new surveillance device that’s somewhere in-between—a small, unintrusive device designed for monitoring your home’s security, but with smart activity-sensing features which could also feasibly capture your baby’s first steps. … Continued
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Tech NewsSploidExtremely rare image shows bee and butterfly drinking crocodile tears
This image is so weird and rare that you may think it’s a bizarre photoshop. It’s not—it was taken by aquatic ecologist Carlos de la Rosa,who says it’s a extremely rare and unique photo. The butterfly and the bee drank the tears from a Caiman crocodilus for 15 minutes. There’s video too: According to De … Continued
By Jesus Diaz -
Tech NewsSploid
Extraordinary eggs and caterpillars are as beautiful as the butterflies
These microscopic photos of butterfly eggs by National Geographic, Prüftechnik Uri, and the University Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland are truly fascinating. I find them even more beautiful than the adult insects. Same goes for their incredible caterpillars. Above, a Dryas iulia butterfly egg. Below, the caterpillar and the adult butterfly. This is an Adonis blue … Continued
By Jesus Diaz -
Tech NewsButterfly Wings Look Completely Crazy Under an Electron Microscope
Destin over at SmarterEveryDay wanted to take an up-close look at the nanostructure of a butterfly’s wing, so he took a few samples to be looked at under a scanning electron microscope. The results are fascinatingly beautiful. Destin and Dr. Robert Simmons at Georgia State University revealed the tiniest details of a butterfly’s wing using … Continued
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io9
The convergent evolution of butterflies is controlled by a single gene
Certain butterfly species are poisonous, providing a deadly defense against predators. Over time, different butterfly species have evolved the same color patterns, basically telling predators to avoid all butterflies of that appearance. This is the mystery of convergent evolution. These butterfly species are only distantly related, and once in their evolutionary history they didn’t look … Continued
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Tech News
I Don’t Care How They Sound, I Want a Pair of Butterfly Speakers
Do you see it? Of course you do! The wooden wings and slim black body of the Monarch Loudspeaker makes the whole get up look like a butterfly. With that kind of styling, I’m not even sure sound quality matters. Luckily, it’s supposed to sound great. The Monarch Loudspeaker has two 15-inch woofers mounted onto … Continued
By Casey Chan -
Tech News
Feed This Butterfly A Few AAA Batteries And It’ll Live Forever
This electronic butterfly will flutter around its jar forever to add some cheer to your desk as long as you feed it some AAA batteries occasionally. Basically, unlike a real captive butterfly, it’ll never let you down or desert you. I can’t guarantee that it’ll never make you cry though. [ThinkGeek]
By Rosa Golijan -
Tech News
Butterfly Eggs Don’t Look Like They’re From This World
Butterflies sorta creep me out. First, they start out as another bug and then they cocoon themselves. Who does that? And just take a look at this butterfly egg, it’s borderline alien looking. National Geographic has a whole slew of pictures of insect eggs. The pictures were taken with a scanning electron microscope, which uses … Continued
By Casey Chan -
Tech News
Darpa’s Butterfly-Inspired Sensors Light Up at Chemical Threats
The Pentagon’s got a new game plan to detect deadly chemical threats: tiny, iridescent sensors that are designed to mimic one of nature’s most colorful creatures: Butterflies. It’s the latest in a series of Darpa-funded efforts to use insects to spot weapons. Last year, the agency tapped researchers at Agiltron Corporation to implant larvae with … Continued
Katie Drummond - Wired -
Tech News
Money Of The Future To Be As Pretty As Butterfly Wings
Even though the future obviously revolves around credit cards and online transfers, a team of British scientists have developed a way for banknotes to be harder to forge—using iridescent butterfly wings as inspiration. The unique information encrypted in each note’s optical signatures currently go some way to protecting currency forgery, but it’s obviously not enough. … Continued
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io9This tiny robotic butterfly is helping to reinvent the airplane
Japanese researchers have built an artificial butterfly that mimics the unusual flight patterns of the swallowtail butterfly. Their tiny model is called an “ornithopter” – and we’ve got the video of the little guy in flight. What makes the swallowtail unusual relative to other butterflies is its very large wings, which dwarf its comparatively tiny … Continued
