Zombies

What better way to mark learnalittle’s return from the dead than a short history of zombies?

Tales of the living dead abound in cultures across the world. The Norse draugar are the bodies of slain Vikings, said to inhabit their graves and jealously guard the treasures buried with their former selves. In Chinese folklore, jiang shi are reanimated corpses that hop around with their arms outstretched, sucking the life-force qi out of the living. And according to Medieval British accounts, deceased ne’er-do-wells may return as revenants – risen bodies bloated with blood – to terrorize their families and neighbors.

Daddy Long Legs

Sometimes, inspiration comes from the most unexpected places.

Endearing accent aside, this indignant German does bring up an excellent point: what exactly is the deal with daddy long legs?

As it turns out, the name "daddy long legs" is shared by three separate creatures, which all sport - you guessed it - notably long legs. The critters our Deutsch friend refers to are called Opiliones (or harvestmen). These eight-legged animals have two-segment oval bodies, have barely changed in the past 400 million years, and can be found across the globe. Though arachnids, harvestmen are not spiders, and lack both silk and venom glands; still, an erroneous urban legend contests harvestmen are the most venomous creatures on earth, yet lack fangs strong enough to pierce human skin.

Bees

They say beauty is in the eye of the bee holder. Well, learnalittle… holds… um. Today’s post is about bees.

Bees are flying insects, closely related to ants and likely descended from wasps. Some bees are highly eusocial: one queen breeds for the entire colony, while female workers guard the hive, collect resources, produce honey, and tend to the queen and her young. A handful of male drones – which hatch from unfertilized eggs – exist primarily to mate with the queen. To raise new queens, workers feed select larvae protein-rich royal jelly, making them larger than the average bee and sexually mature.  These new queens may leave the hive with a swarm entourage to form a new colony.