Insect

What do you do if a South American weed is choking up your local Australian waterways? In the case of the cabomba plant, scientists are enlisting the help of the weed's natural South American enemy, the tiny cabomba weevil.

We’re willing to bet you’ve never given much thought to how bugs urinate, but even if you did you probably wouldn’t imagine them using butt-based pinball paddles to flick drops of pee at 40 G’s, using physics never before seen in nature.

If a robot is going to be tiny, then it better have a way of getting around the many obstacles that will block its way. A new type of robot takes a unique approach to doing so, by jumping like a click beetle.

Mosquito repellent is a key weapon to keep those biting bugs at bay, but it can be frustratingly fickle. Now researchers in Italy have developed new formulations that they say can last as long as eight hours, are odorless and boast other advantages.

Self-driving cars typically use radar or LiDAR technology to avoid collisions with other vehicles. Scientists have now created a much simpler insect-inspired system that could serve the same purpose more efficiently – at night, that is.

While we've heard about a number of "electronic noses," the devices are rarely as sensitive as their natural counterparts. That's why Israeli scientists have taken a new approach, by incorporating a locust antenna into an odor-identifying robot.

One ant is not very smart, but together they can achieve some remarkable things. Inspired by this emergent cooperative behavior, Harvard researchers have built robots that can work together to escape from a “prison,” without needing a specific plan.

If you were trying to gauge the reaction force of an insect's leg, you couldn't just push it with your finger – the size difference between the two would be too great. A set of hand-controlled soft robotic microfingers, however, can get the job done.

A new study from Queen Mary University of London has demonstrated that bumblebees can play with balls even when there’s no reward involved, constituting what is claimed to be first-of-a-kind evidence of play behavior in insects.

New research shows that swarms of insects like bees and locusts can actually produce atmospheric electric charges. By measuring the extent of this influence, the team found that large swarms could produce as much charge as a storm cloud.

Scientists have studied what makes mosquitoes more attracted to some humans over others, and uncovered strong association between being a so-called mosquito magnet and elevated levels of a fatty acids on the skin.

The next time an inquisitive four-year-old asks how many ants there are on Earth, you can be ready to fire back a specific number. Researchers in Germany now have an answer to that question, as well as a follow-up: how much do they all weigh combined?