Tag Archives: Spiders

Animals

The Quadra Project: Biological Wonders – Part 3

Click here to access part one of this series and here for part two .

• A species of weaver ant found from India to northern Australia
(Oecophylla smaragdina) makes its nests by curling leaves into loops.
The leaves, however, are too stiff for any single ant to accomplish this feat. To solve this problem, the ants form a chain of up to 17 individuals. Using their mandibles, each ant grabs the abdomen of the previous ant, and they all pull together to bend the leaves. Using this tug-of-war strategy, the ants are able to pull up to 100 times their individual body weight (New Scientist, 23 August, 2025).

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Animals, Nature

The Quadra Project: Biological Wonders – Part 2

Below are seven biological wonders that should help to confirm the sophisticated intelligence of nature. These are merely a sample of what we are discovering about the animals and plants that share this planet with us, a reminder that is particularly appropriate since our behaviour has initiated the sixth major extinction event in Earth’s history.

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Cost of Climate Change

The Quadra Project: Changes Causing Changes

We live in a time of rapid change. Such periods have been recorded in our earlier history, but nothing quite compares to the present. If this change could be represented in a graph, it would indicate a nearly vertical rise in almost everything from technology and population to species extinction and climate change. We are remaking the world, from the micro to the macro, with consequences that are unprecedented.

Two book reviews in the Atlantic magazine of December 2021 by Rebecca Giggs identify some of these changes.

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Animals

At the Cortes Library: Insects, a presentation

Sean Nightingale, from Wild Cortes, will be giving a presentation about insects, at the Cortes Island Regional Library from 5:30 to 7;00 tonight. 

“I’ve grown up being super interested in biology. I’ve focused on restoring ecosystems. Insects play an important role. They’re one of the most numerous animals that we have on the planet. They play an important role in ecosystems when it comes to habitat creation,” he explained.

“I do a lot of talking about stuff on the seashore, the forests and talking about insects, reptiles and amphibians as well. If someone had a question, like, ‘what’s this bug?’ – I was always the one who was picking up the bugs and didn’t mind showing people.”

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