Misconceptions Part 2

Mary Katherine- Blue

Ander- Red 

After reading the Earwig's Tail, I noticed several misconceptions throughout the book so Ander and I decided to do another blog post on the book. This post is about the second half of the book. The chapter and misconception that I wanted to address was the toilet spider. The misconception was that the Chicago airport bathrooms were infested with blush spiders. So when people would use the bathroom these spiders would bite them causing them to experience fevers, chills, vomiting, paralysis, and in three cases death when traveling on the planes. Although, they come to find out that the whole thing was just a hoax and was not true. Another urban legend in this chapter was the beehive hair. A girl had a beehive do and left it there for several days and before she knew it bees and other insects were in her hair. It sounds really gross but it was funny. This class has been one of the best and most interesting classes ever! I strongly encourage people to go back and really read this chapter (the toilet spider) because there are many urban legends that are funny and cool. I really enjoyed this book and semester and would encourage anyone and everyone to take this class. It teaches you several things about insects and life lessons. 

Last night I watched the movie bugs life. This has always been one of my favorite movies since I was a little kid. This movie is about a colony of ants living together and the problems that they face. The main character is an ant called Flik. Flik has a huge crush on the princess ant Atta. Each year the ants colony must collect food for the grasshopper's. If they do not do this the grasshoppers will kill all of the ants. The grasshoppers are led by an evil grasshopper named Hopper. At the begging of the movie Flik, who is an inventor (although not a very successful one) knows down all of the food that the ant colony had gotten for Hopper and the other grasshoppers. This makes the grasshoppers mad and now tell the ant colony that they must get double the amount of food or they will kill them. After this Flik gets a job where he is suppose to go recruit other insects to fight the grasshoppers. The ant colony ask him to do this because they thought it would result in his death. To make the story short Flick goes and finds a circus group of insects and convinces them to come and fake being warriors. When Flick returns home he is greeted with gifts and becomes a star because they think they have warriors to fight the cockroaches. They device a plan, but it does not work. However the ants realize that they have more numbers then the cockroaches and attack them with the help of their new circus friends. This is a great movie. What I realized about this movie was that all of the characters are made to look like humans rather than insects. The cockroaches look like a human and so do the ants. 

Final Thoughts

Mary Katherine- Blue
Ander- Red 



My views have definitely changed about insects. At first, I was scared of them and would never in a million years touch them. When I saw a dead bug laying around the house and I had to throw it away I would always get a ton and I mean a ton of toilet paper and pick it up and throw it down the toilet. The thought of touching insects would never cross my mind. I use to think they were all harmful and dangerous. After being in this class and learning so much information about insects, constantly being around them, picking them up, and observing them, I am now better with insects. I am not scared of them at all. I mean if a bee came Yellowjacket came buzzing around my head I would be nervous but I am not scared of them. Cockroaches are still gross to me but I have picked several up without gloves, but yes they were dead. I feel as now I have information about insects that I would never had if I would not have taken this course. I learned so much about insects and each in particular bug. I was not aware about how many species there are of each bug. I really enjoyed this class because it taught me more than just "information about bugs" but it also taught me life lessons. I learned lessons from how to kill bugs without squashing them to how bugs overwinter. I would highly recommend this course for people of all ages so they get a comfortable sense of insects rather than this terrifying sense because thats how they have always looked at insects. It was a great course, with great people, and an excellent professor! 

My final thoughts on this class was that I really enjoyed it. When I first signed up for this class I did not know how it was going to be or what I had gotten myself in to. I usually just take the class in January that I know will not have any work. However Mary Katherine convinced me to take this class. When I started the class I was scared of bugs and just wanted to kill any bug that came close to me. I hated just looking at the insects, but now some things have changed. Now I know more information on insects like, which can harm me. This has helped me not be scared of them anymore. I still do not like picking up the insects, and I do not think this will ever change (everyone in the class knows that I always put gloves on before touching the insects). I have learned so much about insects and am happy that I decided to take this class. This January I actually learned something and it was great making a bug collection. After finishing it I have something to be proud of and know that all of my effort was for a reason. This class was a lot of fun and would tell anyone who wants to do something a little bit different than their normal class to take this class because not only will they actually learn something, but they will have fun doing it. I enjoyed all of my classmates and my teacher. I will miss this class, but will remember everything that I learned. One thing that probably won't change is the fact when I see an insect in my room I will try to kill it. 

Thanks so much for reading out blog throughout this class and we hope you enjoyed it. 

Finding Bugs!

Mary Katherine:
Ander:
Last weekend Ander and I went out to my family's farm to look for bugs! It was a good weekend and really pretty to look for bugs. At first we did not find much and were irritated. So we went over toward the lake and started to look for some bugs. We looked under rocks for the first thirty minutes and there we found three earwigs, a beetle, and a yellow jacket. the earwigs looked like the first ones we already had but we kept them just to make sure. After we looked under rocks we went into the forest that surrounded the lake and looked under logs. We really did not find much under the logs except for some baby beetles but we thought they may be too hard to identify so we left them. We them searched the barn for some insects. There we found several wasp of different species. Some were blue wasp and some were yellow and then some were dark brown. We also found a dead ladybug so we were able to keep it and identify it for our collection. When we identified them the last couple days we were able to identify two different species. It was a good day for insects and I am glad we decided to go! 

Last week our search for insects continued, but this time we were in a new territory. We decided to go to Gadsden, Alabama which is the home of Mary Katherine. Her family has a farm about 20 minutes away from her house. We knew that this would be a great place to find some insects. However once we got there we quickly found out it would not be as easy as we first thought. The first insects that we found were earwigs. For some reason every time we go look for insects we find earwigs. We found a total of three earwigs and they looked pretty similar to our previous finds. After this we continued to look under some rocks and found some more insects. We found a beetle and a yellow jacket. This was very exciting because we knew we would have something for our collection. After this we took our search to the area by the lake because there were some rotted logs. However we did not find anything other insects that we already had. After this we went to the barn where we found some wasp. This was one of our better days for insect hunting. Mainly because we found something other then earwigs. It was great to find the yellow jacket and the wasp. They were different then our previous insects. After this our collection seemed to be getting better and we were not as worried. After identifying our insects from this adventure in Gadsden we found two new species. This was a great trip and I enjoyed it. I think it would be good as a class to go to somewhere farther away like Gadsden because I think it helped with finding different insects. Also it was just fun to see a different environment even though I did not enjoy the drive. 

Entomophagy

Mary Katherine:
Ander:

After reading the web pages and Barenbaum I never really thought about or knew we consume insects almost everyday. At first I was really grossed out just because I have learned about insects and their body parts. I have been learning everyday how insects eat or how they use each of their body parts, then I was told I eat these insects and their body parts. My first feeling was unsure and almost disgusted. After I thought about it for awhile I thought if I have been eating them for 21 years and I am healthy then they cannot be too harmful. I just never knew I would eat them. I have always heard of the horror stories of toddlers picking up insects and eating them and such and they were never harmed either, but it is just the concept of putting one of those in your mouth and chewing it an hearing it crunch in your mouth. Especially after I have learned so much, pinned them, smelt them, I was just initially horrified that I have been eating them for this long. I know they do not harm you or haven't harmed me yet because I have not had any problems but I just cannot get over the concept of eating insects. I do not think I would ever try an insect much less allow them to be my main source of protein. I could not take putting them in my mouth and crunching down on them. It gives me chills and just disgust me. I would never be able to be on one of those shows where they have to eat bugs because I would be the first one kicked off for gagging just watching someone who eats it. I have become better about insects and touching them but I am not comfortable eating them and I do not think I will ever be comfortable eating them! 

Prior to this class my knowledge of insects was slim to none. All I knew was if I saw and insect I was going to get freaked out and then try to kill it. After reading the web pages as well as Barenbaum I learned a lot of new things about insects in particularly that we eat insects almost on a daily basis. After learning this I was initially shocked and then grossed out. I could not believe that I ate insects without even knowing that I was. Then I thought about some of the foods that I regularly eat. For example some of the fast food places that I eat at our pretty gross themselves. So after a while I can to grips that I sometimes eat insects. I do not think it is that big of a deal because I am still healthy. The main reason I was disgusted is that in my mind I already think that insects are gross and because of this I freaked out when learning I ate insects. I do not think I could switch insects into my main source of dietary protein. However I do think I could eat insects if it were needed. I think I would be grossed out at first, but in time I would get use to it and be able to the insects. I would need a million dollars or more to make insects my sole source of protein though. 

Misconceptions

Ander:
Mary Katherine:

The book The Earwig's Tail by Mary R. Berenbaum discusses the different types of misconceptions about insects. To be honest I did not know much about insects before this class, but have learned a lot more from taking it. The misconception that I had previously heard about was when a male and female praying mantis mate the female praying mantis kills and eats her partner, usually devouring the head first. The misconception with this is that the female praying mantis does not always do this (Berebaum 83). There are 2,000 species of mantids in the world and the phenomenon has been reported in only a tiny handful of them (Berebaum 84). Prior to this reading I had heard about this and thought that it was true. I thought it was really weird that after sexual activities the female would kill its mate. It sounded so vulgar that one would think it could be true in movies. After reading this book I found out that the female praying mantis does not always kill its mate. After researching this misconception more on they internet I found that one of the reasons why people believed this was because the studies were flawed. Most of the studies on the mating of praying mantis were done in laboratories in small tanks with bright lights shining on them. This was not the habitat that most praying mantis mate in and because of this it skewed the study. After creating an environment that more closely resembled their natural mating habitat the study would show that it was rare for the female praying mantis to kill her male partner after mating (http://www.cracked.com/article_19935_8-ridiculous-animal-myths-you-probably-believe.html). 

The most interesting misconception I found in the Earwigs Tail was the chapter about the brain-boring earwig. The misconception about this chapter is earwigs really do not live in ears. There has never been a case where there was an earwig in someone’s ear yet. The book talks about how the misconception is how people use to think earwigs would crawl into people’s ears and burrow into their brain laying eggs, which would later hatch and take over the person’s brain. Fortunately, this statement is false and that has never happened. I really thought that as interesting because before seeing and knowing what an earwig was, when we talked about them in class I related the “ear” in the word earwig to it being an insect that lives in people’s ears. This legend is claimed to be the “oldest arthropod urban legend” (pg, 10). They came up with this myth because “earwig” is a member of the order Dermaptera that translates to “ear wicga” or “ear wiggler or ear insect” (pg, 10). So they took that information and came up with the legend that earwigs climb into people’s ears at night and kill them by laying eggs in their brain. This misconception is disturbing but cool at the same time, although I am glad it is not true! After finding a couple of earwigs and examining them under a microscope carefully, I would never want something like that in my ear!

http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/28806/title/The-Earwig-s-Tale/

Turkey Creek and Huntingdon

Mary Katherine

Ander

About a week ago the class want to Turkey Creek. It was one of my favorite field trips e took because of the gorgeous creek running through the park. I could have sat there and read a book and just relaxed because it was so peaceful. When we first arrived we had to get the keys for the gate but Dr. Van Zandt told us to get out of the van because there were lots of bugs on the shed where he had to get the keys. Unfortunately, I did not find any bugs there because they were already watched up. Then we finally made it into the park. Our first thirty minutes of our field trip was just exploring and searching for bugs. Everyone really ran down to the creek while Jpatt and I stayed up in the grassy area. There I found a grasshopper and some sort of little beetle. After we searched the grassy area for about fifteen minutes but then we made it down to the creek with the others. I did not find anything down by the creek but that was okay because it was just relaxing and beautiful watching the creek. After we searched for about thirty minutes Dr. Van Zandt gathered us all together and showed us and talked about where we were going next. It was a spot in between two sides of the forests where he said insects loved to be. Before we all started heading that way he showed us this Praying Mantis cocoon/eggs. It was were the Praying Mantis lays their eggs. It was very different than anything else we have ever seen on these field trips and it was very cool. After we searched in between the pine trees for a couple of minutes we then loaded the bus and came back to campus. It was an awesome field trip just because of the natural beauty. Dr. Van Zandt explained how we could come back to Turkey Creek during the summer and play and fish in the creek. I really want to try and come this summer because I love fishing and playing in water. 

Sadly I was not able to go on the class trip to Turkey Creek because we had a basketball game at Huntingdon. This was upsetting because I have really enjoyed all of the off campus adventures. Since I was not able to go on the trip I decided to make the best of it. I knew Huntingdon was in the middle of nowhere so I thought maybe  I could find some insects there. I brought one small "kill jar" with me and hoped I could at least find one insect. I would have around 4 hours before my game started because the JV team had a game before we did. When arriving at Huntingdon the first thing that I noticed was a small park. On the side of the park was a small creek and beside the creek were some logs and rocks. The logs and rocks seemed out of place so I began to look under them. The first few rocks I did not find anything. Finally after picking up a rock I found 2 earwigs that looked different than the ones we already had in our collection. The next day I brought them to class to put in our collection and quickly realized that I was wrong and we already had this insect. Overall I wish I would have been able to go to Turkey Creek especially after seeing all the pictures. 

Falling Rock Falls

Today's blog post features Mary Katherine and Ander talking about our experience at Falling Rock Falls! It was a beautiful place and a wonderful experience. Tune in to the video to listen to what we have to say about the trip. We did not find but one potential insect but we had a great time. We climbed some rough terrain to a waterfall that was absolutely gorgeous. We also found some unique salamanders. We found a total of five and they were all different in shape, size, and color. We had some other cool encounters on this field trip that the video talks about and we do not want to spoil so tune in and catch up with our blog!

Below are some videos of the beautiful waterfall from different views. Hope you enjoy today's blog post!