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14 Feb 2003
When I was looking for a picture of a particular species of beetle yesterday, I came across this wonderful site, full of exquisite photographs of beetles. My favourite is this fantastic, metallic number. A little tip: any beetle with a species name which includes gloriosa, sumptuosa, pulchra or resplendens is likely to be a bit of a stunner.
Any mention of beetles always reminds me of JBS Haldane’s famous quote:
What has the study of biology taught you about the Creator, Dr. Haldane?†“I’m not sure, but He seems to be inordinately fond of beetles.â€Â
[via Evelyn C Leeper’s Quote file]
Update: I spoke a little too soon. I had to repost this entry when I discovered that all sorts of Bad Things™ happen when you try to mix the MT-Textile way of specifying links and the normal HTML method. Must never do that again.
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i get a 'page not found' error for that link. :(
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The full stop got interpreted as the end of the URL. I've fixed it now, so it should work. Sorry 'bout that!
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aww, i feel sorry for the ones in the 'unidentified' class -- how long do they have to wait before they get a class of their very own?----- A very long time, I suspect, given the numbers of beetle species (conservatively around 350,000).
Footnote: isn't Google great? In searching for the louse that got named after the cartoonist Gary Larson (Strigiphilus garylarsoni, in case you wondered), I found a site collecting together bizarre latin names - http://home.earthlink.net/~misaak/taxonomy/taxPuns.html . I thought it was a wind-up, but The Smithsonian links to it, so it can't be totally bogus. I don't think it's a coincidence that many of the funniest names belong to beetles: two carabid species of the genus Agra are phobia and vation. There's also a water species called Ytu brutus.
by bsag @ 15/02/2003 10:02 am • Permalink •