Tautonyms

For a while now I’ve always had a soft spot for animals with the same Genus and species name in their Linnaen classification. For those who had no idea about half the words in that last sentence meant, there was a Swedish bloke called Carl Linnaeus who looked a bit like this: 

He lived in the Eighteenth century and is today known as the father of modern taxonomy. that is probably the least cool thing to be “the father of” considering people like Robert Oppenheimer who is the father of atomic bombs or Charles Townes who invented lasers

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Bug Explorers: The Deadly 40

Spider bites kill people. No really, they do. But then so do car crashes, heart attacks and narcotics. It’s all a matter of stats, to really get a grip on what to be worried about then mathematics can be pretty useful.

The main trouble with statistics is that most people, myself included, have a very limited grasp on how they work. This is something that Professor David Nutt, head of the UK’s drug advisory body, discovered in 2009 when he quite correctly pointed out that you are as likely to be killed horse riding as you are taking ecstasy. Tabloid outrage ensued.

People die taking ecstasy, about 30 every year in the UK. They also die, riding horses, driving cars and yes, by being bitten by spiders. But how many people actually die from spider bites?

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Posted by Jim

Bug Explorers: A Grand Day Out

So, we decided to go to the British Tarantula Society‘s Annual Exhibition a couple of weekends ago (what else does one do of a Sunday…?) and what an experience it turned out to be. We were anticipating a small school hall with a few different exhibiters. Instead we found THIS:

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Posted by Jim