TAG RESULTS FOR: insects

Digital filmmaker François Vautier installed an ant colony in his scanner and scanned it every week for five years. The movie he made of the results is fairly astonishing. It’s high-tech ruin porn at insect scale. Continue reading

After hearing that one of his friends had been stung upwards of 90 times while trying to exterminate wasps from his property, Professor Sekine of Utsunomiya, Tochigi Prefecture, Japan, who was undoubtedly dealing with a wasp problem of his own, decided to come up with an easier way to conquer the problem of painful and potentially dangerous insect stings. Mohican, named for its native-styled faux-hawk, is a robot designed for the sole purpose of slaughtering wasps. Sure, there’s always the... Continue reading

If you’re not quite ready to wear the jewelry you made out of your victim’s skin, no worries. Baby steps. You can start with Putrefashion, a bracelet designed to house living insects. There are air-holes so they can remain living while you wear them! Jorge and I designed the bangle for some mealworms we procured at Petco. They like dry oatmeal or some hunks of potato. Honestly, who doesn’t love dry oatmeal and potato hunks? I’ll tell ya, those smug... Continue reading

So most of us would be all like “yippee” over the fact that bee populations have been steadily declining. Hooray! No more pretending to ignore them so they just leave us alone! No more running like a little girl! But see, losing bees could be bad… very bad. Pollination is crucial for the survival of all of our yummy crops. So these robotic bees might not only be less scary to those who happen to fall into shock if they’re... Continue reading

Christopher Conte, steampunk and insect aficionado, has created some pretty neat creations throughout the years. We haven’t featured any of his work, until now that is. Because, for real, how can you not share a steampunk arachnid? Spiders are one of the most feared creatures in the world. Even the non-venomous variety are creepy. Those legs. *shudder* The six-legged Steam II Insect is a 2.5 x 6 x 6 inch robotic steampunk spider thingy. If this is the future of... Continue reading

So the TED conferences and talks are in full effect. Imagine you were there. What’s the shittiest thing you could do to an audience listening patiently to every word you have to say? OK, so whatever you thought of, you’ll need to double it because Bill Gates pissed everyone off the other day. How so? By releasing a jar of about 10 mosquitoes inside the conference hall and letting them go after attendees. Why do such a thing? Gates was... Continue reading

Seeing this video makes me hope that one day I’ll be flying in a giant robotic butterfly. Researchers in Japan are working on this small ornithopter, a flying device with wings that are modeled after those of a butterfly. The idea is to one day have commercial airplanes with flapping-wing flight just like birds. Above is a high speed video demonstrating the small scale design of the ornithopter. It turns out that the most efficient forward flying wings are wings... Continue reading