22-Jul-2011, 07:44
Having had the good fortune to have been brought up in Britain, I was never short of excellent nature documentaries to watch on television. I must have seen thousands of them over the years. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve watched cheetahs chasing gazelles, lions hunting wildebeest, and polar bears padding over the frozen wastes. It’s remarkable what you we can observe from the comfort of our own living rooms.
In a perverse way, though, the sheer number and quality of nature documentaries on television inevitably means that some of the Wow! factor has gone. When David Attenborough first sat amongst the gorillas, my whole family, and an entire nation, watched spellbound. But nowadays you can catch up-close-and-personal documentaries about gorillas pretty much any week on one channel or another. We’ve seen it all before.
But, this week, sitting watching yet another BBC Nature documentary with my dad, I experienced a true Wow! moment. I mean it literally: both my dad and I actually said “Wow!” We saw an animal neither of us had ever seen in action before do something truly amazing. I was, quite frankly, shocked (and a little embarrassed) that I had not known about its remarkable behaviour. And, to top it all, it was a British animal (although, it turns out, there are numerous species which perform this remarkable feat)…
Fortunately, the BBC has made the clip in question available online. [Postscript: The video is not available outside the UK, apparently. This YouTube video covers the same subject matter.]
Ladies and gentlemen, prepare to be Wowed! I give you the sexton beetle [Nicrophorus vespilloides]:
It is famously said that God must have an inordinate fondness for beetles. I don’t know about that. But I do know that the sexton beetle is now officially my favourite member of that inordinately vast order.
18-Jul-2009, 17:56
The University of Cambridge Zoological Museum has a rather wonderful box of beetle specimens collected by Charles Darwin when he was at the university. The young Darwin had an inordinate fondness for beetles.
Darwin’s beetle collection
Darwin’s son, Sir Frances Darwin, donated his father’s beetles to the university. The collection was originally in a cabinet. Unfortunately, in the 1870′s, one G. R. Crotch began sorting some or all of the collection into boxes, all but one of which was later lost/misplaced.
15-Jun-2009, 09:42
Starlings have their murmurations, toads their knots, weasels their sneaks. I always felt the collective noun for beetles should be a fondness of beetles, after JBS Haldane‘s reported response to a clergyman regarding what we might conclude about the creator by studying the natural world: that He must have an inordinate fondness for beetles.
In his youth, Charles Darwin also had an inordinate fondness for beetles. Late in life, he wrote in his autobiography:
No poet ever felt more delighted at seeing his first poem published than I did at seeing, in Stephens’ ‘Illustrations of British Insects,’ the magic words, “captured by C. Darwin, Esq.”
The Stephens in question was James Francis Stephens, a top entomologist, whom the young Darwin had visited in early 1829, later writing to his cousin:
On Monday evening I drank tea with Stephens: his cabinet is more magnificent than the most zealous Entomologist could dream of: He appears to be a very goodhumoured pleasant little man.
The momentous event of Darwin’s citation in Stephens’ illustrious journal occurred a few months later, 180 years ago today, on 15th June, 1829.
03-Nov-2008, 19:37
Martin Parr is one of my favourite photographers. He’s a great capturer of Britishness, and has taken many wonderful photographs in two places very dear to my heart: the Wirral peninsula where I was born and raised, and Hebden Bridge where I now live.
This Saturday’s Guardian magazine had a great set of Martin Parr photos. They also published them and some of his other photos online. One of the online-only photos grabbed my attention for obvious reasons:
Darwin’s beetle collection, Cambridge University Museum of Zoology.
25-Jun-2007, 00:00
The Natural History museum has a fascinating news story about sexual arms races in diving beetles.
Apparently, every time male diving beetles evolve better suction cups on their feet to hold on to females during mating, the females evolve countermeasures to decrease the effectiveness of the suction cups. This is because the optimal time, length or the number of matings is not the same for males and females.
Who says romance is dead?
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