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If you have a cat, you have probably witnessed them chasing down the insects and spiders and
other crawly creatures that live in your home. Our master of microscopes, James,
has two cats. And so he is the beneficiary of their combined hunting prowess.
So James decided to turn that bounty over to the microscope,
and to see how these familiar creatures look when we see them up close,
and also to see what autofluorescence they reveal when we use our fluorescent light.
Now, this is a bit different than our usual path into more microbial realms, where little droplets
of water reveal new worlds and new creatures. Instead this time, we’re looking at creatures
who are quite visible and even familiar. But it’s always fun to see familiar sights
in unfamiliar ways, and to see what else there might be there to learn.
For example, let’s talk about the silverfish. Now, if you don’t recognize that name, maybe
the silverfish sounds like an elegant creature you’d find swimming in a fantastical river.
But in reality they are those tiny, wingless insects that you find scurrying around in
humid spots like your bathroom. And our homes are full of their favorite foods,
whether that’s the glue binding a book together, wallpaper, or dry food in our pantries.
And unfortunately we don’t have footage of the next thing we’re about to tell you, but it’s the
kind of thing that when you learn it, you have to share it.. The silverfish you are looking at
right now might be remarkably still, but that stillness... conceals the heart of a dancer.
When it comes time for reproduction, male and female silverfish have a whole routine that they
work through. They begin by facing each other and tapping their antenna against each other,
before backing away. And then they repeat this, coming closer and then coming apart
until the male silverfish runs away. Then the female tracks him down, and when she does,
they lay head-to-tail—vibrating with reproductive intent. The male will deposit a sperm capsule
on the ground, the female will pick it up. And from there a new
generation of crawling silverfish will be born. Unfortunately, we do not have a fun story like
that to tell about this spider for the very simple reason that we don’t know what kind of spider it
is. All we know about it is what you can see: it is tiny and green with little bits of white hair.
And its eyes! If you hate spiders, maybe those eyes are scary, but we think they’re
actually really lovely and a little endearing. We also know that this was quite the lucky
spider because it was not killed by James’ cats, which is why you can see it moving around…unlike
this unfortunate spider, which met its end before we put it under the microscope, but it seems to be
twitching a bit when we turn the UV light on. Now we didn’t put our mystery green friend
under the UV light in case that might’ve fried it to death.
Instead James decided to release it, so hopefully it is now off living a wonderful life somewhere.
But we would love to know what kind of spider it is,
so if any of you know anything that can help us identify it, please let us know in the comments!
Now, this, however, is part of a very familiar insect. These are the little
fuzzy hairs on a housefly’s butt. And here, up close, are its wings,
with hints of iridescence popping against the dark background. That color is not the result
of pigments. It’s a structure inside the wing itself that bounce light back in a way that
produces the multifaceted, filmy color we see. And when we turn the fluorescent light on, that
iridescence goes away, but the patterns of veins running through the wings becomes more apparent.
If we travel further down, we get to one of the fly’s feet, which has some strange
autofluorescence at the side. Now, we’re not entomologists, but our guess is that
the autofluorescence is connected to structures in the feet that help the fly taste their food.
That’s right. Flies taste with their feet. As they’re flying around and landing on potential
food, they use the taste receptors on their feet to get a sense of whether their landing
spot is actually edible. Unfortunately, of course those edible landing spots happen to be my food,
or yours, but mostly I’m concerned about mine. Now, flies however are a much less threatening
household pest compared to this one: the scorpion. Now just to reassure you: there was no cat versus
scorpion showdown to bring you this image. This scorpion was a souvenir, preserved and
bought in Thailand, and then brought to James’ home by the previous tenants of that home.
And when we turn on the UV light, almost the entire scorpion seems to turn blue.
It’s a handy trick for finding scorpions in the dark: just shine a black light,
and you’ll find them glowing around you. But it’s not clear exactly what chemical causes
this neon shine, just that whatever chemical it is, it’s located in an outer layer of the
scorpion’s exoskeleton. That is why scorpions that have molted and are still growing out their new,
tough exoskeleton will not fluoresce. Now, why does the scorpion do this?
We don’t really know, but one possibility is that it turns the scorpion into a giant UV sensor,
able to detect UV light even when it's nighttime so that it can find darker places to hide in.
And from one stinger to another, let’s end with every picnic’s favorite insect:
the bee. Only the familiar yellow and black colors
have been rendered into a more orange and teal combination here.
This image of its eyes seems even more abstract, but maybe that’s fitting because bee eyes…well,
they see things differently than we do. They can’t see red, but they can see in
the ultraviolet spectrum. And so just as the way that we look through the microscope changes the
world that we see, an animal’s eyes change the world it sees. There are flowers with distinctive
patterns painted in ultraviolet, a world that will always remain abstract and invisible to
us. It’s a world layered on our own, imagined with a vocabulary that can never fully do it justice.
But not all visions are meant to be seen by us. Sometimes it’s enough to just know
that they exist, and to bring what little parts of them we can into our own world.
Thank you for coming on this journey with us as we explore the unseen world that surrounds us.
We’d also like to again thank Skillshare for supporting this video.
Now that you’ve been up close and personal with some insects and arachnids,
and have this new knowledge of all of the details that make up their bodies,
Skillshare is here to help you put that knowledge to good use!
With courses like Insect Illustrations and Animations in Procreate,
you can create beautiful images of your favorite insects, and artist Liz Kohler Brown
will walk you through the process. You’ll play around with colors and
layouts that work for your personal style in order to create an insect illustration,
and then you’ll go a step further to learn how to actually animate that illustration.
Skillshare is an online learning community that offers membership with meaning.
With so much to explore, real world projects to create, and the support of fellow-creatives,
Skillshare empowers you to accomplish real growth. It’s curated specifically for learning,
meaning there are no ads to distract you, and they’re always launching new premium classes,
so you can stay focused and follow wherever your creativity takes you.
And if you’re one of the first 1,000 people to click on the link in the description,
you can get a 1 month free trial of Skillshare’s Premium Membership.
Now, you might be asking yourself. How does a channel like this exist on YouTube?
Where there’s like chill narration and chill music
and chill visuals. It’s not like big and flashy like a lot of what goes on on this platform.
Well, the reason that we can do this is because there are people who really like it
and some of those people, when they can, they help us out at patreon.com/journeytomicro. And these
are those people. The people who make it possible for us to do this, and we are so grateful to them.
If you want to see more from our Master of Microscopes James Weiss,
you can check out Jam and Germs on Instagram,
and if you want to see more from us, there’s always a subscribe button somewhere nearby.