Blogs / Discoblog

Leaf beetle mothers give their children an inheritance that many people wouldn’t quite appreciate—a mobile home made of poop. Gee thanks, mom. As Not Exactly Rocket Science describes:

After [a female] lays her eggs, she seals each one in a bell-shaped case. When the larva hatches, it performs some renovations, cutting a hole in the roof and enlarge the structure with their own poo. By sticking its head and legs out, it converts its excremental maisonette into a mobile home, one that it carries around with them until adulthood.

This beetle behavior has been well established by scientists. However, the leaf beetle Neochlamisus platanithey has been singled out by researchers for its “elaborate example of faecal architecture.” The larvae add a little insulation in the form of plant hairs, called trichomes, which help ward off predators, according to new research.

Staged attacks on larvae with and without fecal shelters demonstrated that poop-protected larva were less likely to be attacked by crickets, spined soldier bugs, and green lynx spiders than unprotected larva. NERS explains why:

Even if a predator investigates the case, they must first breach the unappetising shield, and the larva doesn’t make it easy for them. [The researchers] saw that, in some cases, the larvae pulled their cases down flush with the floor, making them even harder to penetrate. That defence was particularly effective against the bugs, whose stabbing mouthparts couldn’t break through the wall of the case. Some of the larvae also wiggled their cases back and forth, which could serve to shake off or startle a predator.

Even if a predator breaks through the case (as frequent holes in the structures suggest), they’d meet a large concentration of trichomes in the attic before they reached the larva underneath.

For beetles at least, putting up with their mothers’ crap can save their lives.

Related Content:
Discoblog: Enough of This S#%t! Dung Beetles Morph into Millipede-Eaters
Discoblog: Finally! An iPhone App That Lets You Track Your Bathroom Habits
Discoblog: Archeologists Find the Darnedest Things Digging Around in Hyena Poop

Image: Wikimedia Commons / Neochlamisus

The folks behind the best-selling book, “What’s Your Poo Telling You?” aren’t satisfied with being mere bathroom reading material. So they’ve dropped a new iPhone app, the Poo Log, which allows you to time, log, and graph your BMs—and learn about your gastrointestinal health while doing so.

Via The Presurfer:

The ‘Poo Log’ is a digital timer and journal for recording and studying the wondrous uniqueness of each bowel movement. With a clever mix of bathroom humor and legitimate medical information, the ‘Poo Log’ allows the user to track his/her digestive workings and graph their ‘poo’ – all with one hand.

According to the app’s developers, AvatarLabs Inc, the tracker features medically accurate info that is suitable for all ages, and of course helpful tips such as, “Light a match. Now.”

Related Content:
Discoblog: Want to Cure Your Fear of Flying? There’s an App for That.
Discoblog: “Electric Fart Machine” Could Lead to Greater Fuel Storage Efficiency
Discoblog: Not Subtle, But It Works: Peepoo Bag Converts Human Waste Into Fertilizer

Image: AvatarLabs Inc

• Waste not, want not: Stockholm burns culled bunnies for heating fuel.

• Helicopters search for radioactive rabbit poop near the Hanford nuclear reservation. Workers to begin removing the poop soon, which might be the worst job ever.

• Mathematician predicts an ESPN fantasy—a Dodgers-Yanks World Series. FOX Sports also has its fingers crossed.

• Doctors enjoy the five-fingered discount by pocking watches, severed hands from hospitals.

• Think technology is invasive now? A new camera is under development that could capture your entire life.

We here at Discoblog are just about obsessed with poop stories. But today’s installment isn’t just a laughing matter, it’s record-breaking: Researchers have discovered the oldest human hair ever—between about 200,000 and 250,000 years old—and it was recovered from a white, round fossilized hyena poop in a cave in South Africa.

Getting the hair out of the hard-as-a-rock hyena dung wasn’t easy—the researchers had to use tweezers to pluck the 40 fossilized hairs. Unable to gather any DNA information from the decrepit sample, they were fortunately able to see patterns of wavy, scaly bands on the hair, which is typically seen in modern primates. In this case, the researchers said the strands looked most like human hair.

We’ll have to excuse the researchers for not reporting whether the hair was black or curly or straight or bleached blonde—these details were lost within the guts of the hyena who’d chowed down on the rotting human corpses.

Related Content:
Discoblog: CSI Dog Poop
Discoblog: Muskrat Poop The Next Penicillin?

Image: flickr/ patries71

It’s hard to get any respect when you eat feces. Maybe that’s why one species of lowly dung beetle has forsaken its namesake for a more glamorous place on the food chain—that of a ferocious carnivore. The species Deltochilum valgum may look like any other dung-roller, but it has adapted to feed on giant millipedes more than ten times its size—for comparison, picture a house cat taking down and subsequently devouring an anaconda.

When rumors of Peruvian dung beetles eating millipedes started floating around, a research team led by Trond Larsen of Princeton University headed to the Peruvian rainforests to see for themselves. After setting up more than 1,000 beetle traps baited with either dung, fungus, fruit, or millipedes in various stages of life and death, they found that D. valgum’s food of choice is in fact injured millipedes. When D. valgum finds an injured millipede, it uses its powerful hind legs—originally adapted for rolling neat balls of dung—to grasp the millipede’s body. After the millipede finishes flailing about, the beetles uses its sharp teeth to saw between its prey’s body segments, sometimes decapitating it. The corpse is then dragged to a safe location where the beetle devours the soft inner tissue.

(more…)