h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Why not a bit of the coral (if it's still in good condition) to see the detailed patterns laid down by the critters.

I was looking through my collection of dead arthropods yesterday and I did think moths' wings might be a good one. I'd love to see one of those close up. An antenna's a good idea, too.

Dust: it'd be great to view a dust mite, but how would I know I had one? Dust mites look so cool, with their corduroy skin and their tiny little heads.

I was thinking about looking at a springtail from my garden, but I don't want to have to kill it first.

Maybe one of my own hairs would be interesting.

Mould, too, now I think about it. I'd better grow some mould.


Incidentally, I saw a really cool moth on the bedroom window the other day: I thought it was a mosquito at first, because it looked almost exactly like one. I was amazed. What advantage is there for a moth to look like a mosquito? Or is it just chance that it looked that way?

I didn't see your post there, SEF. Of course! Coral. Why didn't I think of that?

> "Why didn't I think of that?"

Perhaps because I'm weirder than you or just do more cross-correlating (which in some senses is the same thing). I expect you were keeping your "problems" in separate buckets rather than viewing one as the potential solution for the other. That or you have an arthropod fixation and forgot about the other critters. I wondered if you had any interesting plants. The pores in leaves are quite viewable under normal microscopy anyway but moss is a bit special, then there's lichen and perhaps even a waterbear ...

> "What advantage is there for a moth to look like a mosquito?"

What advantage is there for a mosquito to look like a mosquito? If you knew that you might find the same reason pertained to the moth. Are you sure it was a moth (perhaps one of the clearwings?) and not a caddis fly?

I was trying to think of tiny things, whereas coral comes in great big lumps.

I had considered moss and waterbears. I thought moss might be a bit boring after being plated. Organisms have to be dried out, so a waterbear tun is the most I'd see of a waterbear, even if I managed to track one down again.

As for pollen, having corrected a thesis on palynology, I'd be happy never to see a pollen granule again.

It definitely wasn't a caddisfly. It had feathery antennae and a rolled-up tongue. Its wings were greyish white, but gave the illusion of being transparent, because its body was the same colour. They were folded up very narrowly. It was a moth, I tell you.

> "Organisms have to be dried out"

Ah, some things were variously freeze-dried, set in wax and fractured back in my day. I even accidentally found out the other month what had happened to the electron microscope I'd used. It's in the garage(?) collection of someone I had work on my light microscope (someone I wouldn't even have contacted if I hadn't forgotten the name someone else recommended). It isn't currently in working order though and might be rather expensive to recondition.

> "Its wings were greyish white"

That doesn't really narrow it down much, but I had been assuming before you did mean it was transparent. Some plume moths, eg Platyptilia gonodactyla, are vaguely mosquito-like but fit less well with your extra description of folding up wings very narrowly.

Great stuff

Didn't know that about the alleged worm like things off the rocks from Mars. That they could have been dried wrinkly impressions from the moulded gold.

Learn something new everyday...