New Show!

The Show

Follow us as we film the incredible insects and spiders of America! This coast-to-coast journey will take place with a vintage sofa that will be placed in different ecosystems across the country. At each stop we will inspire you to “get off the couch” to explore America’s backyard wilderness and the most diverse animals on the planet. Wanna come???

Partners 

Project Noah (supported by National Geographic) is an online repository for digital wildlife images from around the world. Their goal is to help people connect with nature and foster an appreciation of local wildlife. By involving scientists, students, and citizen scientists, Project Noah helps to gather important ecological and biological data while striving to preserve biodiversity. We are so excited to be working with them on this awesome project!

We are also proud to announce Texas A&M University’s Department of Entomology, the United States Forest Service, Gobi Gear and Betsy & Iya as official sponsors! More to come on this soon!

Watch

This show will air on YouTube in August, 2013. Each episode will be linked with new National Science Framework Standards that help teachers to promote critical thinking skills. DVDs of the series will be available through various outlets along with curricula.

Each week we will highlight an episode on Project Noah’s Official Blog, and NPR’s Science Friday website, where we are featured guest bloggers. Our episodes have the potential to reach over 1.5 million people each month through these websites.

Get Involved!

Project Noah will create a “Bug Chicks Mission” to document the animals we see during our trip (in real-time). People worldwide can follow along on the journey through this Mission, and add their own photos of organisms found along our route!

Help!

Please contribute to this project and help us provide positive science and nature programming for people over the world. If 1,000 of our Facebook fans gave $20 each, it would easily cover the cost of filming and post-production. We can do this!

We have different donation tiers and you’ll get cool stuff at each level.
Want to give a different amount? That’s ok too.

*Keep in mind that items will be shipped after filming is complete. Thanks for your patience!

DONATE NOW!

Roger that, Grandma

 
This is a re-post of an original Bug Chicks post on Science Friday.

 

Photo courtesy of Hildegarde Oberhofer.

In 1945, Kristie’s grandmother was a woman in a man’s world. She studied meteorology, technology, and geometry, often performing calculations in her head to help pilots land safely when planes were stacked on top of each other in three dimensional space. While her husband was fighting in World War II, she was breaking barriers here in the U.S.

 

Listening to Grandma “Obie” tell Kristie the story was inspiring, and we’re so grateful for the time we spent with her. She had some sage words about how people didn’t listen to women in those days. Watch the video to hear this amazing woman tell a bit of her history.

 

The Future of Women’s History

For us though, the best part of the day was talking about careers and the concept of science as a daily activity. At one point, each pair was given a beetle larva. They were asked to make observations and use them to come up with questions. In other words, they were asked to do science. We explained that science is, in essence, organized curiosity. We revealed the shocking truth that the wrong answer or not knowing the answer is the basis of science and that it’s not a bad thing. Finally, we admitted that the “right” answer is always changing as scientists learn more and create more powerful tools to explore this world and beyond. More than half the group said they were interested in a career in science.

 

*AN ASIDE:  I get irritated when I read articles that say we shouldn’t try to get more people into the sciences because there aren’t enough professor or post-doc jobs as it is. It’s a narrow, limiting, and dangerous argument. Not everyone is going to BE a scientist. Some will be writers and communicators, others teachers, and many will be parents of youngsters. We should work to make science accessible and concepts attainable so that we create a society that celebrates and expects scientific literacy.

 

 

This month people all over the country will be talking, writing, and speaking about great women in history who are an inspiration to both women and men. We will, too. Jess and I will also take a few moments to remember that we have the incredible privilege of being able to speak directly with young women who will make history in the future. They will inspire others in different ways—through various mediums, careers, and voices. We are so grateful for this chance to teach others about passion for biodiversity and the nature of science. We may never make history, but every week we teach young women who could.

Bug Closet!

This is a re-post of an original Bug Chicks post on Science Friday.

We recently moved into a new space and realized that we had no place to store our animals. Our office is in a basement, and it’s really chilly! Since most of the animals in our arthropod zoo are tropical, they need to be kept in an environment between 70 and 80 degrees Fahrenheit. In the office, we usually huddle around a fake fireplace heater while we write, script, and edit videos. Unfortunately, our animals can’t huddle with us, and we don’t want to leave a space heater running all the time. So, for the past few months our arthropods have been living in Jess’s bedroom in their large Tupperware traveling crates. It’s time we made them a proper home!

We decided that a closed cabinet would be best, preferably with glass doors. This way the heat from their heating mats would be retained and natural light would be allowed in. Most of our animals are nocturnal, and we wanted them exposed to light in order to have a natural circadian rhythm. Also, we wanted to be able to see our beautiful creatures! There are a bunch of great cabinets that fit this bill, but they were expensive, and we are entrepreneurs on a budget. Luckily, we live in a city with tons of thrifty vintage stores that are fun to poke around. While looking for something else (isn’t it always the way?), we ran into an old Ikea cabinet that was almost perfect…

Almost. After wrestling it into the truck and getting it back to the office, we realized it was A) really wobbly, and B) really tall, which meant C) once we put the cages into the wobbly tall cabinet, it would likely tip over in a tarantula-scorpion- roach-mealworm frenzy of broken glass and dreams. It was time for a little DIY and renovation. We measured the legs and sawed 16 inches off. This made the base more stable and the cabinet weight lower. No more wobbling!

Next we needed a way for the tank heating pad cords to extend out of the back of the cabinet. Drillin’ time! We placed the animal cages in the cabinet to check placement and bored two rather large holes in order to feed the cords through. As you can see from the photo below, we are amazing at drilling. Our precision is flawless and we obviously take great pride in our work. Not really—it doesn’t need to look pretty; it just needs to work! The animal cages will cover the holes.

And voila! All of our animals (except for two large cages) fit snugly inside. Over the next few days we’ll be checking the temperature inside to make sure it’s warm enough. If not, we’ll purchase a few more heating mats. Our tarantulas Esme (from the famed tarantula ICU post) and Samba will be kept on the dresser next to the cabinet. We’re trying out a seedling heat mat that fits under both of their cages.

Do you keep arthropod pets? Have you found a novel way to display them while keeping them warm in the winter? What’s that you say? Oh, central heating? Well, our way was more fun!

Entomology in One Word

This is a re-post of an original Bug Chicks post on Science Friday.

During the Entomological Society of America’s annual meeting in Knoxville last year, we met people with an incredible diversity of interests when it came to arthropods. Scientists, students, instructors, and technicians shared their enthusiasm about entomology with us, with one stipulation–they could only use one word!

Entomology in One Word from Bug Chicks on Vimeo.