Welcome back to Toy Aisle, io9's weekly round up of all the fabulous new toys just waiting to drain our wallets of their precious monetary fluids. This week, Hot Toys tackles The Last Jedi’s most important characters, plus a patriotically posable Captain America, and even stranger Stranger Things board games.
Burying beetles (Nicrophorus) are hard to miss. The insects aren’t big, but most species are painted with vibrant, orange blotches on a glossy black background. According to new research, walking around dressed in their Halloween best may have a much more important function for the beetles than just looking like …
Below the tangle of vines and branches of the East Malaysian rainforest, a small contingent of ants scuttles frenetically along the shaded leaf litter. But these are no mere picnic pests—these are Myrmoteras trap-jaw ants, fearsome predators armed with long, spiky, widely-agape mandibles—and they are on the hunt.…
Filmmaker and photographer Geoffrey Whitman was sitting on his back porch yesterday when he noticed a group of wasps picking away at a dead dragonfly. Smartly, he pulled out his camera to document this rarely seen insectoid feast in all its gruesome glory.
When taking high-resolution 3D scans of insects, scientists typically have to kill their test subjects, which isn’t always ideal. By taking advantage of an insect’s ability to survive oxygen-poor conditions, scientists have now used carbon dioxide to keep bugs in a state of suspended animation for upwards of seven…
Like a baseball player running to make a catch, dragonflies are also capable of predicting the trajectory of a moving object, typically its next meal. New research is revealing the mechanisms behind this complex cognitive task, which was once thought to be exclusive to mammals. It’s hoped that these insights will lead…
Praying mantises are among the most frightening insects on the planet, equipped with powerful front legs which they use to snatch unwary insects, spiders, and even the odd amphibian or reptile. But as new research reveals, praying mantises are also proficient at capturing birds—which they do more often than we thought.
If Marvel’s Spider-Man always seemed a little too far-fetched, you’re going to have an even harder time wrapping your head around the Darwin’s Bark spider. It’s no bigger than a thumbnail, but it can shoot a web at distances of over 80 feet, allowing it to cross rivers and spin massive traps.
As species, we have little in common with bees, fruit flies and beetles. Bugs are so alien to us that it’s hard to know how exactly they experience the world. Do they feel pain? Do they experience pleasure? What is sex like for them? Do they enjoy it in any way—physical or otherwise?
The smaller a drone gets, the more places it can be easily flown. But while many researchers have been trying to tackle the monumental challenge of building drones that look and behave like tiny insects, a new approach has engineers giving Mother Nature’s existing creations drone-like upgrades.
The common ladybug is easily recognized by its signature red and black spotted shell. But when researchers at the University of Tokyo used a creative trick to make its carapace transparent, it revealed insect wing secrets that could impact development of robotics, satellite antennas, and microscopic medical…
Based on the popular Disney film The Lion King, I assume identifying lion royalty is fairly easy. After all, an elder baboon, Rafiki presented the young lion prince Simba to the entirety of the animal kingdom from atop Pride Rock during some ceremony yet-to-be-observed by humans. But how do the ants know who’s going…
Do you have hobbies? Maybe cycling or carpentry or something low key? Well, this guy has a cooler hobby than you.
You might not know this, but we’re in the midst of an insect shape-studying renaissance. MicroCT technology—basically a lab version of the CAT scanners found at hospitals—is increasingly allowing scientists to produce detailed three-dimensional images without destroying samples. So naturally, if we’re scanning…
A tick sucks some monkey blood. A monkey’s grooming partner picks the tick off. The tick lands in some sap. The whole thing fossilizes. Scientists discover the cells inside the tick in the amber. They turn the blood cells into monkey clones and you’ve essentially got some sort of Jurassic Park in real life.
It’s no secret that bees have been having a really rough time: Just yesterday, the rusty-patched bumble became the first bee in the continental United States officially listed under the Endangered Species Act. But that’s the tip of the iceberg for our buzzy little friends, who unlike their asshole cousins—wasps—only…
Scientists in China have discovered male damselflies caught in the act of trying to court females inside a piece of 100-million-year old amber. It’s an extremely rare find, providing a glimpse of insectoid peacocking behavior during the age of dinosaurs.
Researchers at Vanderbilt University have found a secondary set of odor sensors on female malarial mosquitoes that appear to be specifically tuned to sniff out humans. While admittedly disturbing, the discovery could lead to new ways of combating malarial mosquitoes and the dreaded disease they carry.
Like death and taxes, drone crashes are basically inevitable. Even experienced pilots aren’t immune to hardware failures or software problems. But instead of building drones stronger, or wrapping them in awkward safety cages, Swiss researchers have designed a flexible quadcopter that squishes when it crashes,…
A popular approach to designing robots that can navigate a world built for living creatures is to simply copy Mother Nature’s designs. But while trying to improve how a six-legged robot walks, researchers at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne actually found a faster way for six-legged creatures to get around.
