-FUPPETS- Loves Bugs and Scanning Electron Microscopes

The good people at the UK periodical the Telegraph have put together a great slide-show of some spectacular images. The images of various bugs/spiders and other assorted creepy crawlies have been individually colored to help differentiate the various parts of their anatomy.
-FUPPETS- has always loved scanning electron microscopes and their ability to give us a glimpse of a world so small that it is usually overlooked by everyone. The image below is the head of a fly maggot. It looks like a bizarre Muppet!

-FUPPETS- Loves Artificial Butterflies

The Japanese are some kick-ass people. They have a passion for the bizarre and the outlandish as well as a deep-seated respect for culture and tradition. These things are not mutually exclusive. It just seems that way to didactic morons.
Scientists in Japan have been studying the way butterflies fly. They have built a mechanical replica of a swallowtail butterfly.

Among the various types of butterflies, swallowtails are unique in that their wing area is very large relative to their body mass. This combined with their overlapping fore wings means that their flapping frequency is comparatively low and their general wing motion severely restricted.
As a result, swallowtails' ability to actively control the aerodynamic force of their wings is limited and their body motion is a passive reaction to the simple flapping motion, and not -- as common in other types of butterfly -- an active reaction to aerodynamics. ( Science Daily )

Below is a short movie of this artificial swallowtail butterfly in flight. The replica model is properly called an ornithopter. The study of aerodynamics is a relatively young one, and there are still great discoveries waiting to be made.

World's Longest Insect (or why Borneo kicks so much ass)

Measuring it's body, this Stick Bug from Borneo is 14 inches long. Measuring the full length of it's spindly legs, this bug is a whopping 22 inches long! Incredible! Found by a villager and given to a local Malaysian amateur naturalist named Datuk Chan Chew Lun in 1989, this specimen was formally announced as a separate species of Stick Bug and named Phobaeticus Chani, or "Chan's megastick," in Chan's honor.
Having seen stick insects in the rolling hills of Austin Texas, it is not hard to imagine just how shocking it must be to spy such a gigantic bug. The stick bug's camouflage is nearly perfect and all that it needs to do is stand still to avoid detection. -FUPPETS- wonders if birds and lizards chomp on this giant Borneo bug like a pretzel stick.