Here is the Ig Informal Lecture by the winner of the 2020 Ig Nobel Entomology Prize. The Ig Nobel Prizes honor achievements that make people LAUGH, then THINK. In the Ig Informal Lectures, some days after the ceremony, the new Ig Nobel Prize winners attempt to explain what they did, and why they did it. [In non-pandemic years, […]
Tag: spiders
Seeing Spider/Antman Movies Lessen Fear of Bugs?
What power over the minds of humans lurks in bug-human-hybrid superhero movies? One study, at least, asks that question. The study is: ” ‘Spidey Can’: Preliminary Evidence Showing Arachnophobia Symptom Reduction Due to Superhero Movie Exposure,” Yaakov S.G. Hoffman, Shani Pitcho-Prelorentzos, Lia Ring, and Menachem Ben-Ezra, Frontiers in Psychiatry, epub 2019. The authors, at Bar-Ilan […]
Some observations on the mental powers of spiders
Behold, from 1887, a disquisition on certain powers of certain multi-legged individuals: “Some observations on the mental powers of spiders,” George W. and Elizabeth G. Peckham, Journal of Morphology, vol. 1, no. 2 (1887): 383-419. The Peckhams say, early on: “So, also, we have found that to learn anything of the mental processes of spiders […]
When mailing spiders, caterpillars, or cockroaches
QUESTION: When you mail live creatures, insects and invertebrates (including bees, caterpillars, cockroaches, crickets, destroyers of noxious pests, earthworms, fish fry and eggs, leeches and other parasites, lugworms, maggots, mealworms, pupae and chrysalides, rag worms, silkworms, spiders and stick insects) in the UK, must you box and package them? The answer lies on page 26 of the Royal Mail‘s […]
