Dragonfly butt power

I guess I’m behind the times, but I didn’t realize until this morning that the long-time nature blogger known as Bug Girl — who I even follow on Twitter, though obviously not closely enough — has come out from behind the pseudonymn (she’s Dr. Gwen Pearson), started a pretty cool-sounding consulting business aimed at helping nature centers and researchers get online, and best of all, has a blog at Wired called “Charismatic Minifauna.” The latest post is especially link-worthy:

The ability of a dragonfly nymph to successfully snatch and grab food is directly related to its anus. The mouth-grabber (labium) is hydraulically activated. The dragonfly draws water in through the anus, clenches, then compresses its abdominal and thoracic muscles against the water-filled rectal chamber. This raises the internal body cavity pressure, and pushes the labium out –in a strike that takes 10 to 30 milliseconds.

The amount of internal pressure generated is about 6000 Pa, or 6 kPa; equivalent to 0.87 psi (pounds per square inch). That doesn’t seem like a lot, until you consider that big nymphs only weigh 100mg (0.0002 lbs), so generating almost a pound of pressure WITH THEIR BUTT is pretty impressive. A Camaro turbocharger produces 7 psi, so you could say this little insect has 1/7th of a Camaro in its ass.

The other amazing function of a dragonfly nymph rectum is jet-propulsion. By un-clenching their rectum, water in the rectal chamber can be jetted out at high pressure, pushing the nymph forward through the water. The forward thrust generated is 1.5 g in 0.1 second; nymphs’ top speed is 10cm/second. They can throttle their rectum back to produce varying amounts of thrust through the water.

And there’s more. (Click through also for the link-references within the passage I quoted.)

When the wind died

(Lord’s day). Being called up early by Sir W. Batten I rose and went to his house and he told me the ill news that he had this morning from Woolwich, that the Assurance (formerly Captain Holland’s ship, and now Captain Stoakes’s, designed for Guiny and manned and victualled), was by a gust of wind sunk down to the bottom. Twenty men drowned. Sir Williams both went by barge thither to see how things are, and I am sent to the Duke of York to tell him, and by boat with some other company going to Whitehall from the Old Swan. I went to the Duke. And first calling upon Mr. Coventry at his chamber, I went to the Duke’s bed-side, who had sat up late last night, and lay long this morning, who was much surprised, therewith.
This being done I went to chappell, and sat in Mr. Blagrave’s pew, and there did sing my part along with another before the King, and with much ease.
From thence going to my Lady I met with a letter from my Lord (which Andrew had been at my house to bring me and missed me), commanding me to go to Mr. Denham, to get a man to go to him to-morrow to Hinchinbroke, to contrive with him about some alterations in his house, which I did and got Mr. Kennard.
Dined with my Lady and staid all the afternoon with her, and had infinite of talk of all kind of things, especially of beauty of men and women, with which she seems to be much pleased to talk of.
From thence at night to Mr. Kennard and took him to Mr. Denham, the Surveyor’s. Where, while we could not speak with him, his chief man (Mr. Cooper) did give us a cup of good sack. From thence with Mr. Kennard to my Lady who is much pleased with him, and after a glass of sack there; we parted, having taken order for a horse or two for him and his servant to be gone to-morrow.
So to my father’s, where I sat while they were at supper, and I found my mother below stairs and pretty well.
Thence home, where I hear that the Comptroller had some business with me, and (with Giffin’s lanthorn) I went to him and there staid in discourse an hour ‘till late, and among other things he showed me a design of his, by the King’s making an Order of Knights of the Seal to give an encouragement for persons of honour to undertake the service of the sea, and he had done it with great pains and very ingeniously.
So home and to prayers and to bed.

The wind drowned
and went to his grave.
I miss his infinite talk at night
and his cup of good air.
And where am I,
a person of honor,
to undertake the service
of the sea?


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 9 December 1660.

Plummer’s Hollow hunting report

Our near-neighbor, the poet Todd Davis (whose work has appeared here in the past) included the following in an email on Saturday night. I thought it might be of general interest, especially for fans of meditation. —Dave

pileated woodpeckers on a dead tree

Still no deer. But another beautiful day in the woods. As you know, it snowed Friday night until about three in the morning. When I walked in at 5:45 a.m., the woods were striped in white and there was no need for a headlight: the snow on the ground was catching the light from the sliver of moon, making my path easy.

My blind was crushed to the ground by the weight of the snow. It’s a temporary blind, a tent essentially. I had to pull it back up, knock snow and ice from it, and make all kinds of ridiculous noise.

I had deer around me four different times today, but none afforded me a safe and merciful shot. Thus no deer. The ravens were quiet today, but the crows took up the chorus. I had a dead black cherry near and a pileated would knock on it every so often, asking me to open the door of my senses, stop me from day-dreaming or drowsing from lack of sleep.

I walked out at 5:30 p.m. The moon was back up and, without wind, all was silent, except for the railroad tracks in the valley. While my freezer and family may mourn no meat, it was still a day well spent.

My face is a jar of honey/ you can look through*

Consider the mind of indirection,
how an arrow might travel through it

as through an amber-colored medium:
thickly spangled with motes and relics

from its previous lives— dangle
of severed insect legs, clumps of dust

or grains of pollen, parts of the hive
collapsed from collective industry

of what’s meant to sate the hunger—
And it might be difficult to navigate

one clear course from a given point
to its supposed destination,

for the minuscule pockets of air
traveling up and down are slower

than grill elevators, their pulleys oiled
with molasses— Still, the days grow long

to darken pools of collected gold: thick plot,
dense hold of what we hope will weather sweeter.

~ *after Mary Ruefle

The gospel of wealth

To Whitehall to the Privy Seal, and thence to Mr. Pierces the Surgeon to tell them that I would call by and by to go to dinner. But I going into Westminster Hall met with Sir G. Carteret and Sir W. Pen (who were in a great fear that we had committed a great error of 100,000l. in our late account gone into the Parliament in making it too little), and so I was fain to send order to Mr. Pierces to come to my house; and also to leave the key of the chest with Mr. Spicer; wherein my Lord’s money is, and went along with Sir W. Pen by water to the office, and there with Mr. Huchinson we did find that we were in no mistake. And so I went to dinner with my wife and Mr. and Mrs. Pierce the Surgeon to Mr. Pierce, the Purser (the first time that ever I was at his house) who does live very plentifully and finely. We had a lovely chine of beef and other good things very complete and drank a great deal of wine, and her daughter played after dinner upon the virginals, and at night by lanthorn home again, and Mr. Pierce and his wife being gone home I went to bed, having drunk so much wine that my head was troubled and was not very well all night, and the wind I observed was rose exceedingly before I went to bed.

O tell me to come, leave
the key of the chest
with the surgeon.
Live plentifully and love
good things. Let the virginal
thorn pierce the rose.


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 8 December 1660.

Because delight: an inter-writing

after seon joon

Because delight is a little white boat
I will gather up my hair, hitch up my skirts,
and lower myself into its hold.

Because risk is a splintered seat
I will push off first with just the toe
of one foot before I lean and let go.

Because delight is a glistening applause
I will learn that I can lower my eyes
to the more homely sting of tears.

Because risk is a wind in the leaves
I will take what needs to be released
to a hill and open my hands.

Because delight is the small flame
in the altar of the eyes,
I will be
apprentice acolyte.

Because risk is the god of our beating breath
I will row until my arms are bronzed
and muscled cadence.

Because delight is the yellow star of a crocus
I will tell the winter blooms of paper-
white that they are also loved.

Because risk is the radius of winter
I will not spend all its days
bargaining over the cost of spring.

Because delight is a name I know
I will practice my cursive
in the richest ink.

Because risk is a body I love
I will let it take me by the hand,
turn and turn me before the dip.

 

In response to thus: Three, with photograph.

Animal mindfulness

We posted an extra essay on my mom’s website this month. Since she originally wrote it for the June issue of the Pennsylvania Game News, it’s filled with summertime stories. Her subject: the about-face in scientific thinking about how non-human animals think and feel.

For almost half my life, treating wild creatures as thinking beings was scorned as anthropomorphizing them. Most scientists considered them to be little more than thoughtless robots. They neglected the study of animal minds because they didn’t believe that they could tell the difference between automatic, unthinking responses on the part of animals from possible behavior that showed an ability to make choices in what they do.

In school, students learned that it was unscientific to ask what an animal thinks or feels. If they were so bold as to ask, they were “actively discouraged, ridiculed, and treated with open hostility” as Donald R. Griffin wrote in his ground-breaking book Animal Thinking back in 1984. A renowned bat biologist, his previous book, in 1981, The Question of Animal Awareness, had been the subject of widespread derision. Still, he was able to give many examples of seemingly thoughtful wild creatures who, when they were confronted with new problems, acted creatively to solve them.

The writings of Griffin and other scientists, interested in what Griffin called cognitive ethology, have encouraged some scientists to study learning in vertebrate and invertebrate animals. They have been bolstered by the work of neurobiologists, who study the brains of animals and have made some amazing discoveries, most notably the fact that an animal that has loops between its thalamus and its forebrain is a conscious thinker. Birds and mammals, including humans, have these loops. So too do reptiles, although their loops are minimal.

Read the rest.

As an aside, I reprocessed an old porcupine photo for the article. It’s taken me many years to learn the simple truth that being slightly out-of-focus isn’t always a bad thing for a photo:

porcupine-close-up

Not to mention the importance of proper light levels, color balance, etc. Here’s what I did with the same photo back in 2007:

porcupine

Midnight rider

This morning the judge Advocate Fowler came to see me, and he and I sat talking till it was time to go to the office. To the office and there staid till past 12 o’clock, and so I left the Comptroller and Surveyor and went to Whitehall to my Lord’s, where I found my Lord gone this morning to Huntingdon, as he told me yesterday he would. I staid and dined with my Lady, there being Laud the page’s mother there, and dined also with us, and seemed to have been a very pretty woman and of good discourse.
Before dinner I examined Laud in his Latin and found him a very pretty boy and gone a great way in Latin.
After dinner I took a box of some things of value that my Lord had left for me to carry to the Exchequer, which I did, and left them with my Brother Spicer, who also had this morning paid 1000l. for me by appointment to Sir R. Parkhurst. So to the Privy Seal, where I signed a deadly number of pardons, which do trouble me to get nothing by. Home by water, and there was much pleased to see that my little room is likely to come to be finished soon.
I fell a-reading Fuller’s History of Abbys, and my wife in Great Cyrus till twelve at night, and so to bed.

Twelve o’clock, and I go hunting
with a tin box to carry
spice to the dead,
which trouble me;
get nothing and see little—
like a history of twelve at night.


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Friday 7 December 1660.