The biggest bee in the world has recently been seen. The last sighting in the field was 1981. While there have been numerous attempts to rediscover it, there were no results. It is known as Wallace's giant bee, Megachile pluto. It has jaws like a stag-beetle. Here is the picture to show how big it is. This bee lives in Moluccas, an archipelago within the Banda Sea, Indonesia. Here is the comparison shown in the article that's on the weather network site.
There are more big bugs - really big bugs. For example, the largest beetle is Titanus giganteum. It is 6.6 inches long, so is the size of a human hand. It can easily snap a pencil in half. The longest insects on the planet are stick insects. They can grow as long as 2 feet in Southeast Asia where the longest variety lives.
I consider it lucky that we did not see a Giant weta in New Zealand. They can weigh more than a sparrow and are among the heaviest insects in the world. They are about 4 inches long. Their name means "God of the Ugly Things'. While they are really ugly, another big insect is the beautifully marked black and white Goliath beetle. They can grow to over 4 inches.
A wing span of 1 foot and a total wing area of 60 square inches is what an Atlas moth's size is. They have cocoons that are occasionally used as purses in Taiwan. Grown for their fagara silk, all that has to be done is install a zipper. In comparison to this month, the largest butterfly is Queen Alexandra's birdwing - it has a wingspan of more than 1 foot, and is found in Papua New Guinea.
If you want to see pictures of all of these the MNN (Mother Nature Network) site has them HERE. One that isn't covered in the article is the longest earthworm. It is native to the southeaster state of Victoria in Australia, and is 3.3 feet long and 2 inches in diameter. They can live 5 years, so have been known to grow to 9.8 feet long. And what about when they stretch? The 3 foot worm can stretch up to 12 feet.
Our picture today is a pretty swallowtail butterfly in the garden.
What was the first product to be scanned with a barcode? It was a 10-pack of Wrigley's Juicy Fruit chewing gum, in June 1974.
The inventor was Joe Woodland and it was Morse code that gave him the idea. He filed the patent with his friend Bernard Silver in 1949.
"I remember I was thinking about dots and dashes when I poked my four fingers into the sand and, for whatever reason—I didn’t know—I pulled my hand toward me and I had four lines. I said ‘Golly! Now I have four lines and they could be wide lines and narrow lines, instead of dots and dashes. Now I have a better chance of finding the doggone thing.’ Then, only seconds later, I took my four fingers—they were still in the sand—and I swept them round into a circle."
The first operating machine was large and worked "up to a point". It took some more inventions - the laser and the minicomputer - to make it practical. And the original barcode was a circle - a bull's eye - which proved difficult to print. The competition escalated in the 1970's between seven companies to have their system adopted by the Symbol Committee of the National Association of Grocery Chains.
Slow to start, more scanning was installed in stores. They found that at about 5 weeks after installing barcode scanners, sales typically started climbing and reached 10-12% increase in sales that never dropped off. And there was a 1-2% decrease in operating costs. The return on investment for a barcode scanner was 41.5%.
And here's one of the responses to barcodes described by Wikipedia:
"The global public launch of the barcode was greeted with minor skepticism from conspiracy theorists, who considered barcodes to be an intrusive surveillance technology, and from some Christians, pioneered by a 1982 book The New Money System 666 by Mary Stewart Relfe, who thought the codes hid the number 666, representing the number of the beast. Television host Phil Donahue described barcodes as a "corporate plot against consumers".
