Week in Geek: insect scuba edition

Your next scuba diving buddy could be a water beetle.

It turns out these little guys don’t breathe under water with gills, but rather bring their oxygen supply with them, much like we humans do. And they’ve been doing it for millions of years.

Thanks to their size and their streamlined shape, predaceous diving beetles can actually drag air underwater with them thanks to the power of surface tension. The beetles use their wings to trap air from the surface and carry it with them when they dive into the streams and lakes they live in. The air provides them with the oxygen they need while they hunt for food. One depleted, they return to the surface for a refill.

That sure beats renting fifty pounds of scuba gear!

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Here’s some more geek from the week.

• Dogs may tilt their heads so they can see you better.
• Fossils of giant rats found in East Timor indicate they were as big as today’s small dogs. YIKES.
• The Experimental Farm Network works to save rare seeds and plants from war torn areas like Syria.
• New “nanopore” technology could be a low-cost, efficient way to make seawater drinkable.
• A short history of sugar and why we like it so much. [VIDEO]
• Why it’s so hard for science to keep ahead of doping athletes.
• Physicists at Brookhaven National Laboratory say they have measured the nuclear strong force in antimatter.
• A look inside Russia’s Star City, the only place on Earth from which to access the International Space Station.
• Stunning series of photos of a polar vortex on Venus taken by ESA’s Venus Express mission.
• There *may* be ice volcanoes on Pluto. I repeat: ice volcanoes on Pluto.
• The larger of Mars’s two moons, Phobos, may be coming apart at the seams.

Keep on geeking!

@Summer_Ash, In-house Astrophysicist