Humans have a tendency to think of termites as pests, but we seldom take into account the fact that there are thousands of species. Not all of them are the house-devouring little bugs home buyers are so terrified of finding. Termitat is an ant farm-like display that houses a slice of Douglas Fir and a colony of termites in a clear 1/4″ thick acrylic habitat.

Chris Poehlmann developed the Termitat after 25 years of designing exhibits for zoos, museums, and aquariums. He has been fascinated with the tiny world of termites since 1982 when he built his first termite habitat for a California natural history museum.

Poehlmann created the Termitat to share this fascination with the world. Termites have complex social systems and lead surprisingly fascinating lives – much like ants, even though they’re far less cute. Owners of the Termitat don’t have to worry about escapes and house munching; the species used in the display don’t eat houses or thrive in a home environment outside of their acrylic case.

Taking care of the termites is easy. Their food is already included, and that one slice of wood can last the 25-strong colony for up to three years. An injection of water every week keeps them happy and active. Although the termites aren’t of the dangerous persuasion, the Termitat can’t ship outside of the U.S. or to certain states. Starting at $125, the termite colony is considerably more expensive than a little plastic ant farm, but it’s got to be satisfying to watch that slice of wood being eaten away one day at a time.

The post Desktop Termites: Cool Habitat Displays Wood-Eating Bugs first appeared on Gajitz.

The natural world has a lot to teach us about how to interact with our environment. Researchers at Harvard looked to the often-maligned termite for robotic inspiration. Their work led them to create a swarm of robots that can build architectural structures. The hope is that the robots can be used to build structures in dangerous or inaccessible places.

The robots put together structures without a set plan, “thinking” the way that termites do when they are building. Termites build their structures simply by carrying a piece of dirt to a place – if that place already has a piece of dirt in it, they move on to another place.

Similarly, the termite robots are only given very simple directions as to which direction they should move with their building blocks. If there is already a block or another robot in the place they go, they just go to a different place to put down their block. The robots are programmed to never trap themselves inside the structure they build.

To test the robots, the researchers had them build a little castle. Their work is incredibly slow and doesn’t seem to have a lot of order to it, but in the end the structure is built and the termite ‘bots prove once again that just watching nature can inspire the most amazing technology.

The post Nature-Inspired Robots Build in Teams Just Like Termites first appeared on Gajitz.

Remember the hookah-smoking, puzzle-talking caterpillar from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland? It turns out that that animated butterfly lava wasn’t the only insect that enjoys a few puffs now and then – but the hornworm caterpillar doesn’t do it for kicks. It emits little puffs of tobacco to ward off its natural predator, the wolf spider.

The caterpillar eats the leaves of the tobacco plant, a practice that would kill a human (and probably most other insects). It’s a fortunate choice of diet since the bug has a gene that allows it to eat the plant without dying. In fact, the tobacco provides an interesting defense against spiders. [WARNING: the video below contains some arachnid-on-insect violence.)

When confronted with a wolf spider, the hornworm caterpillars emit a foul-smelling puff of tobacco through tiny holes in their sides. The terrible smell is a warning to predators – a tactic that researchers are calling “defensive halitosis.” The discovery is significant because after researchers isolated the gene responsible for this interesting trick, they were able to develop a strain of tobacco that cancelled out the gene’s function.

After the caterpillars ate the genetically altered tobacco, they were unable to produce the little puffs of bad breath that scared the wolf spiders away. Researchers believe that they can use this knowledge to produce crops that will address specific human nutritional or health needs by canceling out certain genes in our own bodies.

The post Smoking Caterpillar Blows Nicotine to Ward Off Predators first appeared on Gajitz.

Legs and the way organisms use them are signposts of the evolutionary process. Bi- and quad-pedal movement is for us silly mammals. Insects are the ones on the higher end of the evolutionary ladder. Take a look at this beetle for proof. Three separate species of dung beetle have scientists baffled with the way they seem to gallop.

The reason for this odd form of travel isn’t fully understood. The typical tripod gait most insects utilize is much more efficient, leading the layman to conclude they’ve forgone the normal bug walk for some type of cocky strut. Entomologists, however, are more logical. “The very marked pacing…might be giving it a better signal in terms of estimating the return distance from the food to its nest. When it gallops, it slips less in the soft sand,” explains Marcus Byrne, professor at Wits University in Johannesburg, South Africa.

The post And They’re Off: Dung Beetle Species Gallops Like a Horse first appeared on Gajitz.

The ancient art of origami was the inspiration behind Harvard University’s new generation of flying micro-drones. The artificial bees – or “mobees,” or “robobees” – were originally created in 2009 to study Colony Collapse Disorder. The team believed that if they could create a colony of robotic bees they might be able to figure out what was causing millions of bee hives and colonies to disappear.

What the team ended up creating in the process, however, was a fascinating new way to make teeny-tiny robots. In the past, the team might have built each bee individually. But for this project, they are “printing” the small bodies onto sheets of ceramic, carbon fiber and plastic. The electronics are built into the body instead of stuffed into it after it has been built, giving the bee bodies their necessary lightness.

After the bodies are “printed,” parts pop up and lock into place – kind of like a children’s pop-up book. This makes the tiny robot’s body three-dimensional without increasing its size, weight or complexity. The only drawback to the current model is that the bees have to be tethered to a battery via a wire since attaching a battery to each bee would make the tiny ‘bots too heavy to fly. If anyone can figure out this dilemma, though, it’s the smarties at Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

The post Robotic Pop-Up Bee Drones Inspired by Ancient Origami first appeared on Gajitz.