Damn, that's interesting!

4562 readers

1 users here now

No clickbait
No Racism and Hate speech
No Imgur Gallery Links
No Infographics
Moderator Discretion
Repost Guidelines
No videos over 15 minutes long
No "Photoshopped" posts
Image w/ text posts must be sourced in comments

founded 3 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

102

This wasp is half the size of an amoeba and its microscopic brain has a trick up its sleeve.. (blogs.dal.ca)

submitted 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

5 comments fedilink hide all child comments

These wasps are not single-celled organisms though, and their brains alone contain 4600 neurons. For reference, the brain of a honeybee contains ~1 million neurons. Despite their extremely small heads (again, look at that head next to the SINGLE CELLED amoeba) the wasps can still fly, seek out mates, and find thrip eggs to parasitize. So…what? How?

top 5 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] paysrenttobirds 24 points 7 months ago

I love how at the end of the article he describes a truly morbid detail about a completely different insect because

I needed to share the burden of knowing they exist and are out there, waiting.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 7 months ago

Answer: "The lifespan of these wasps is only 5 days"

"it's brain cells get rid of their own nucleus and all its stored maintenance information. The neurons already exist, so maintenance is the only task [...] requiring DNA, and they don’t live long enough for that to matter at this point"

"No nucleus or DNA frees up half of a neuron’s volume"

[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Anyone know why Megaphragma mymaripenne's genus has "mega" in the name?

"mega-, megalo-: [...] big/great." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_commonly_used_taxonomic_affixes#M

[–] [email protected] 10 points 7 months ago

Because its mega small lol

sorry

[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago

Phragma means a divider. My guess is someone was saying these tiny bugs are extremely (mega) separate (phragma) from their relatives.