"... and an 8,000-pound resin model of a beehive. It also houses 18 different species of live creatures, including giant cave cockroaches and spiny flower mantises.
Visitors also can pass under a transparent sky bridge to see 500,000 leaf-cutter ants transporting pieces of blackberry bramble to create their colony’s fungal food.... On three of the four floors open to the public at the new center, floor-to-ceiling glass displays reveal a slice of the 4 million specimens that are housed in the building — from butterflies collected by 'Lolita' author Vladimir Nabokov to 'cleared and stained' sea horses in jars....."
By the way, what's the stupidest argument you ever got into with a smart person? I won't name the person, but he objected to my categorization of butterflies as insects. I couldn't believe I had to argue about this. I remember, at what point, saying, "Well, what do you think they are? Birds?!"
I got into it with a smart British colleague I respect over whether or not Megan Markle is black in the minutes prior to a zoom call recently. I said she was black, but he disagreed saying she's mixed. I retorted that she herself regarded herself as black from prior statements, but he didn't think that was sufficient. I can see how it could be confusing. If she's not black and my colleague is right, what color is she? If that's true we might need a whole new color spectrum, or at the very least there should be a color named after her. That way everyone would know what color she was and ‘Markle Windsor’ could take its place on the swatch of most unpopular colors at Lowes between Fecal Sunrise and Egomaniacal Mauve.
An insect, perhaps, some would argue. A butterfly is the final stage of development from egg to larva to pupa to adult. Others would offer an apology for the four stages of perception, a meal, a carbon reservoir, a milk sucking burden.
Insects make most people a bit squeamish, and butterflies are probably largely considered the most beautiful of all the insects by those same people, thus a reluctance to see them as insects. I would love to go see that new insectarium!
By the way, what's the stupidest argument you ever got into with a smart person?
Smart people need to feed their ego, just like us lesser brains. The often get lost in a loop of pedantry, in an attempt to be right about something.
Insects are fascinating. Entomologists, as a group, are some of the weirdest people I have run across. The good kind of weird. I've spent a lifetime trying to keep insects at bay, in order to get a crop to harvest, with good yield. Army worms will take a field in a matter of days, Flea Beetles, seed corn maggots.The big ones, corn root worm, corn borer and a few others have been stymied by GMO. Eliminating millions of pounds of insecticides.
Good grief the building is hideous, especially in context. Why do architects so often insult the neighborhood? But the museum needed a lift—many of the existing exhibits were tired and dusty, and the new ones sound promising. I hope the net effect is an improvement.
Ah, I missed the Nabokov connection the first time. Speak, Memory is the best memoir I’ve ever read. Butterflies make an appearance, as does Lyle’s Golden Syrup on the breakfast table in St. Petersburg. And Pale Fire is magnificently outrageous: “I was an infant when my parents died. / They both were ornithologists. I’ve tried / So often to evoke them that today / I have a thousand parents. Sadly they / Dissolve in their own virtues and recede, / But certain words, chance words I hear or read, / Such as ‘bad heart’ always to him refer, / And ‘cancer of the pancreas’ to her.”
Good grief the building is hideous, especially in context. Were they trying to make it look like an overgrown termite mound? Mission Accomplished, I guess.
Wasn’t me, Rafe. I took 9th grade biology at West Lafayette (Indiana) High School where every student learned that butterflies and moths are insects. I did, however, just today, confuse the slang terms “basic” and “based.” What a big dodo 🦤 I am.
“ By the way, what's the stupidest argument you ever got into with a smart person?”
MD, JD, PhD, latter paid for by the Army when he was working on bio weapons at Ft Detrick. This was throughout the summer and fall of 2021, about the origins of COVID-19. He was adamant that it was zoonotic in origin. Where did that furon cleavage site come from? Where were the ancestor viruses? How did the virus naturally evolve the affinity to human ACE2 receptors? Where are the genetic tracks for any of that? How about the evidence of gene editing? Sent him article after article. Originally, he would just say he was the expert. He was the one who had worked in the field. Then, that both the WHO and CDC said that it zoonotic. Even some articles, that were easy to poke holes in. When they all retracted, he just was quiet. Never did admit that he was wrong.
Insects are the only nonvertebrate which can fly, which would seem like the end of the argument.
I've had tons of stupid arguments with allegedly smart people. Probably the dumbest one was when I was sharing an unairconditioned room in Key West, in the middle of the summer, with another Marine and he insisted on trying to cool the room by leaving the refrigerator door open.
Most other examples were cases of: They don't know much about the subject, but are certain that they're right.
Althouse writes "I remember, at what point, saying, "Well, what do you think they are? Birds?!"
His name wasn't Aristotle by any chance?
On the subject of butterflies, recent genome studies have shown that insects are more closely related to crabs and lobsters, the Crustacea, than they are to spiders, the Chelicerata. However, the evidence was there to see long before genomic research techniques were available. Many butterfly caterpillars have ten appendages, six on the anterior that develop into the legs of the adult, and four more on the posterior that are fully resorbed during pupation.
On the subject of leafcutter ants, etymologists are quite intrigued by the mystery of the evolution of the leafcutters. There are 47 known species of leafcutters and each one cultivates a unique species of fungus that exists nowhere but under cultivation inside a leafcutter ant colony. How did these relationships evolve, and why are the crop and the cultivator so inextricably bound together? Human farmers aren't restricted to just one crop, so what prevents these ants from choosing their food?
Most ant species are omnivorous, devouring anything they discover in their foraging, whether it's a crippled grasshopper or a glob of ice cream dropped from SlowJoe's waffle cone, but leafcutters can't even digest the plant matter they collect. No one has asked me, but I suspect this is a case of parasitism evolving into mutualism.
Thanks to HBO's silly "The Last of Us" everyone at the bar swilling rotgut craft brews are currently in awe of fungi that live by zombifying ants. What they often forget or ignore is the fact that these fungal parasites are genetically bound to one and only one insect host species. Furthermore, they ignore the parasite's conundrum. If you're a parasite that destroys its host an absolute limit on your ubiquity is imposed by your own survival strategy. Even the common cold virus has resolved the conundrum by just making us cough and sneeze rather than killing us outright like the Ebola virus. A clever parasite will do better by keeping its host alive to continue in its service than by killing it. So is it possible the leafcutters started out as victims of a fungal parasite that got smart?
Althouse, thank you for this Nabokov post. You can certainly thread needles.
Why are sea horses in an insectarium? Just the same, I'd be fascinated to come upon an exhibit of 'cleared and stained' sea horses in jars. Sea horses are fish even though they have wings like birds [FYI, Meade].
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33 comments:
“There are some ideas so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them.”
Orwell.
I got into it with a smart British colleague I respect over whether or not Megan Markle is black in the minutes prior to a zoom call recently. I said she was black, but he disagreed saying she's mixed. I retorted that she herself regarded herself as black from prior statements, but he didn't think that was sufficient. I can see how it could be confusing. If she's not black and my colleague is right, what color is she? If that's true we might need a whole new color spectrum, or at the very least there should be a color named after her. That way everyone would know what color she was and ‘Markle Windsor’ could take its place on the swatch of most unpopular colors at Lowes between Fecal Sunrise and Egomaniacal Mauve.
An insect, perhaps, some would argue. A butterfly is the final stage of development from egg to larva to pupa to adult. Others would offer an apology for the four stages of perception, a meal, a carbon reservoir, a milk sucking burden.
Luck be a lady.
Insects make most people a bit squeamish, and butterflies are probably largely considered the most beautiful of all the insects by those same people, thus a reluctance to see them as insects. I would love to go see that new insectarium!
A wonderful opportunity for some macro photography with that iPhone 14...
By the way, what's the stupidest argument you ever got into with a smart person?
Smart people need to feed their ego, just like us lesser brains. The often get lost in a loop of pedantry, in an attempt to be right about something.
Insects are fascinating. Entomologists, as a group, are some of the weirdest people I have run across. The good kind of weird. I've spent a lifetime trying to keep insects at bay, in order to get a crop to harvest, with good yield. Army worms will take a field in a matter of days, Flea Beetles, seed corn maggots.The big ones, corn root worm, corn borer and a few others have been stymied by GMO. Eliminating millions of pounds of insecticides.
If a cow can jump over a green cheese moon why can't butter fly? Don't argue with me I grew up on a dairy farm.
If someone insisted butterflies were insects to me, I would no longer consider them smart.
Good grief the building is hideous, especially in context. Why do architects so often insult the neighborhood? But the museum needed a lift—many of the existing exhibits were tired and dusty, and the new ones sound promising. I hope the net effect is an improvement.
Class: Insecta
Kingdom: Animalia
Order: Lepidoptera
Phylum: Arthropoda
Suborder: Rhopalocera
Science.
Ah, I missed the Nabokov connection the first time. Speak, Memory is the best memoir I’ve ever read. Butterflies make an appearance, as does Lyle’s Golden Syrup on the breakfast table in St. Petersburg. And Pale Fire is magnificently outrageous: “I was an infant when my parents died. / They both were ornithologists. I’ve tried / So often to evoke them that today / I have a thousand parents. Sadly they / Dissolve in their own virtues and recede, / But certain words, chance words I hear or read, / Such as ‘bad heart’ always to him refer, / And ‘cancer of the pancreas’ to her.”
This sounds cooler/more terrifying than the Insect Zoo at the Smithsonian's Natural History Museum.
If they're not insects (they are!), then what was your (cough) smart colleague insisting they were?
Good grief the building is hideous, especially in context.
Were they trying to make it look like an overgrown termite mound? Mission Accomplished, I guess.
There’s an insectarium in downtown New Orleans. Probably smaller than this one but pretty cool (and creepy.)
The cool includes a butterfly display as described, very beautiful.
The creepiest was the model of a New Orleans home full of live cockroaches.
"By the way, what's the stupidest argument you ever got into with a smart person?"
Probably whether Daylight Savings Time actually provided an extra hour of sunlight for the garden.
I left out a “not” in my comment above. If someone insisted butterflies were NOT insects…..
Well Meade, the world wants to know: *do* you categorize them as birds?
Wasn’t me, Rafe. I took 9th grade biology at West Lafayette (Indiana) High School where every student learned that butterflies and moths are insects. I did, however, just today, confuse the slang terms “basic” and “based.” What a big dodo 🦤 I am.
Bats are bugs!
“ By the way, what's the stupidest argument you ever got into with a smart person?”
MD, JD, PhD, latter paid for by the Army when he was working on bio weapons at Ft Detrick. This was throughout the summer and fall of 2021, about the origins of COVID-19. He was adamant that it was zoonotic in origin. Where did that furon cleavage site come from? Where were the ancestor viruses? How did the virus naturally evolve the affinity to human ACE2 receptors? Where are the genetic tracks for any of that? How about the evidence of gene editing? Sent him article after article. Originally, he would just say he was the expert. He was the one who had worked in the field. Then, that both the WHO and CDC said that it zoonotic. Even some articles, that were easy to poke holes in. When they all retracted, he just was quiet. Never did admit that he was wrong.
Now do 'worm' vs. snake vs. dragon vs. insect vs. 'miserable person' vs. 'bending things':
https://www.etymonline.com/word/worm
They're all just worms to me.
Stupid argument with smart person: She thinks rent control is awesome. Her proof is that she snagged a rent controlled apartment in NYC.
Half a billion dollars for a 5,000 sq ft bug room seems a bit much. Even Boss Tweed might have done it for less.
It does seem that economics brings out the stupid in the nominally smart people.
Insects are the only nonvertebrate which can fly, which would seem like the end of the argument.
I've had tons of stupid arguments with allegedly smart people. Probably the dumbest one was when I was sharing an unairconditioned room in Key West, in the middle of the summer, with another Marine and he insisted on trying to cool the room by leaving the refrigerator door open.
Most other examples were cases of: They don't know much about the subject, but are certain that they're right.
Althouse writes "I remember, at what point, saying, "Well, what do you think they are? Birds?!"
His name wasn't Aristotle by any chance?
On the subject of butterflies, recent genome studies have shown that insects are more closely related to crabs and lobsters, the Crustacea, than they are to spiders, the Chelicerata. However, the evidence was there to see long before genomic research techniques were available. Many butterfly caterpillars have ten appendages, six on the anterior that develop into the legs of the adult, and four more on the posterior that are fully resorbed during pupation.
On the subject of leafcutter ants, etymologists are quite intrigued by the mystery of the evolution of the leafcutters. There are 47 known species of leafcutters and each one cultivates a unique species of fungus that exists nowhere but under cultivation inside a leafcutter ant colony. How did these relationships evolve, and why are the crop and the cultivator so inextricably bound together? Human farmers aren't restricted to just one crop, so what prevents these ants from choosing their food?
Most ant species are omnivorous, devouring anything they discover in their foraging, whether it's a crippled grasshopper or a glob of ice cream dropped from SlowJoe's waffle cone, but leafcutters can't even digest the plant matter they collect. No one has asked me, but I suspect this is a case of parasitism evolving into mutualism.
Thanks to HBO's silly "The Last of Us" everyone at the bar swilling rotgut craft brews are currently in awe of fungi that live by zombifying ants. What they often forget or ignore is the fact that these fungal parasites are genetically bound to one and only one insect host species. Furthermore, they ignore the parasite's conundrum. If you're a parasite that destroys its host an absolute limit on your ubiquity is imposed by your own survival strategy. Even the common cold virus has resolved the conundrum by just making us cough and sneeze rather than killing us outright like the Ebola virus. A clever parasite will do better by keeping its host alive to continue in its service than by killing it. So is it possible the leafcutters started out as victims of a fungal parasite that got smart?
"What a big dodo I am.'
Yes, Meade, you're a very big bird, but definitely a Gruidid and not a Columbidid.
You know what really bugs me?
Althouse, thank you for this Nabokov post. You can certainly thread needles.
Why are sea horses in an insectarium? Just the same, I'd be fascinated to come upon an exhibit of 'cleared and stained' sea horses in jars. Sea horses are fish even though they have wings like birds [FYI, Meade].
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