The mayfly, that insect whose time is up in a mere 24 hours or so, goes by many other names, including bay fly, cisco fly, drake fly, dun, eel fly, fish fly, flying clipper, green fly, July fly, June bug, June fly, and more. This is part of a...
In an earlier episode, we talked about those huge insects known as gallon-nippers.We heard from Dell Suggs in Tallahassee, Florida, who says he knows them simply as gallinippers. This term for a really large mosquito goes back to the early 1700s...
What is an earwig? Those skinny brown insects with pinchers coming out their backsides have a reputation in folklore for crawling through people’s ears and laying eggs in their skull. But really, earwigs are just simple insects that take their...
What’s the very last word in the dictionary? Depending on which dictionary you consult, it might be zythum, zyzzyva, zyxomma, or zyxt. This is part of a complete episode.
flare out n.— «After experiencing months of saturated soils in the winter, then bone dry periods in the spring and summer, some Douglas firs planted in less than ideal situations are showing what some foresters call “flare...
ant colony optimization n.— «Ant colony optimisation, as the technique is called, turns on the fact that such insects exploit food in what appears to be an intelligent, but is in fact an entirely mindless, way.…he computer...