Ladybirds

[Potstubsdustbins]

Did anyone else see the pic of the frozen ladybirds in todays rag.

I never knew they could survive after being frozen solid.

Colin

[jps]

yeah i did, great pic tbh.

apparently they can survive being frozen, i didnt know that either

[Hilary B]

Are they 'real' ladybirds, or Harlequins?

[Nicos]

OK- not seen todays rag....I have spent 1/3 hr in the garden this pm clearing ivy off a south facing wall- 0ne red ladybird relocated.

[Potstubsdustbins]

Hard to see exactly what they were they were covered in frost but I think they were the real deal.

Yes Nicos we still have them about round here, very sluggish and not flying but there are two or three in my lean to.

Colin

[snohare]

I remember reading an article about ladybird farming in the US. Or perhaps they should call it ladybird "harvesting" - supposedly what happens is that the main wave of the ladybird breeding/migration/population follows the seasons warmth, until eventually in the autumn as things get cold, they end up collecting in huge drifts on Northerly bays. At this point, as they are all going into hibernation, men with pantechnicons and long hoses, come along...and hoover them all up, in order to sell them to farmers the next spring !
You couldn't make it up, could you ?
When I worked at a local sawmill, I discovered that bluebottles hibernate in cold weather. We used to have stacks of planks with small gaps between each layer to allow drying - one cold day, as I started to dismantle such a stack, I found thousands of flies clinging to the undersides of each plank. I thought they were dead, but left in the sun they would warm up, gradually began to "zzzZ" and became active...although to begin with, their reflexes were really naff, easiest fly-swatting in the world !
Isn't nature amazing...

[veggiechicken]

This is a serious question - believe it or not. How can a sleeping bluebottle cling to the underside of a plank? Why doesn't it fall off as we would if we tried to hang from something then fall asleep?

[snohare]

That's probably the most common question my Ranger Service friends get asked by schoolchilodren about anything that clings or runs to undersurfaces, veggie.
It's simple but cunning. If you look at a fly's feet under a microscope, they have absolutely miniscule hairs, shaped like hooks. Of course at a microscopic level, few things - not even glass - are really that smooth, and what happens is that when the insect's feet are pressed down, the little hooks act like velcro. They also increase the surface area of the feet by a huge amount; what that does is make the friction so great that something as small and lightweight as an insect can stay attached. Relax the pressure, they detach.
I find insects amazing. I think if no-one had ever told me, I would still believe that the world must be millions of years old, because the mechanisms that many species have are so wondrous and so unlikely, I would have to believe that they'd been around for millions of years in order for them to occur.
For example, spiders have accelerometers in their knees ! That's why, when you lift up a spider, it will usually let out a line and abseil down - the signals it's getting are akin to those it would get if falling, the cure for that is to spin out a line that acts as a parachute.
The NASA research that found this out, also led to the development of better sensors for airbags in cars - they can tell the difference between a bang from a supermarket trolley and a traffic shunt now - those smartphones where the screen rotates as you turn the phone sideways, and the sensors which made the Wii revolution possible. All because of spiders, which can't even run for more than 13 seconds...

[veggiechicken]

Thank you Snohare! I just knew you'd know the answer. You also know now that my brain is as advanced as that of a schoolchild.
That rotating screen thing is on my pedometer and I keep twisting it from side to side to see if I can catch it out! Simple things please simple minds.....

[robfosters]

This is exactly how magicians like David Blaine and Dynamo do their 'back to life' trick. Chill an insect until it looks dead. Then cup it in their hands, blow onto it, and the hot air magically brings them 'back to life'.

[veggiechicken]

Didn't work very well for David Blaine himself though: David Blaine - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Frozen in Time
David Blaine encased in a block of ice for Frozen in Time in Times Square, New York.
On November 27, 2000, Blaine began a stunt called "Frozen in Time", which was covered on a TV special. Blaine stood encased in a massive block of ice located in Times Square, New York City. He was lightly dressed and seen to be shivering even before the blocks of ice were sealed around him. A tube supplied him with air and water while his urine was removed with another tube. He was encased in the box of ice for 63 hours, 42 minutes and 15 seconds before being removed with chain saws. The ice was transparent and resting on an elevated platform to show that he was actually inside the ice the entire time. CNN confirmed that "thousands of people braved the pouring rain Wednesday night to catch a glimpse of Blaine as workers cut away at the ice."[21] He was removed from the ice in an obviously dazed and disoriented state, wrapped in blankets and taken to the hospital immediately because doctors feared he might be going into shock.[22] The New York Times reported, "The magician who emerged from the increasingly unstable ice box seemed a shadow of the confident, robust, shirtless fellow who entered two days before."[23] Blaine said in the documentary follow-up to this feat that it took a month before he was able to walk again and that he had no plans to ever again attempt a stunt of this difficulty.[citation needed]

[snohare]

I heard a rumour that he did it to win a bet. It was only later that his friends admitted they made the wager to win another bet - to see who could take the p*** out of him most effectively...

[Two_Sheds]

I discovered that bluebottles hibernate in cold weather.

Now that explains why we get them in the house on a sunny winter days. I know they've not come in from outside, because all the doors and windows are shut.
*penny drops* = they're all hiding in the house already, aren't they? Horrid dirty things

[veggiechicken]

What if you hoovered them up when comatose (the bluebottles not me), forgot to empty the bag and the warmth brought them back to life inside the hoover. Then they start buzzing and you think the machine is playing up, open it up and all those horrible creatures fly out. I'm never going to hoover again, just in case.

[Two_Sheds]

What if you hoovered them up when comatose

Hoovering brings fleas to life. Well, makes the eggs hatch anyway. The previous owner had a horrid dirty cat (peed on the carpets) that left us a leaving present.

After I'd cleaned & shampooed and then replaced the stinky carpets, I started deep cleaning the floorboards. Flea eggs can lie undisturbed for YEARS until they sense a host - something warm and breathing. Like a vacuum cleaner. The vibration of the thing caused all those dormant flea eggs to hatch and infest the house with cat fleas, gross. It took me weeks of torture and then googling to find out what had happened.