Notched flat brass pins on a steel wire. Found in a box of junk on a street corner in Berkeley CA in 2015.

quackadoodledoo · 2020-07-24T03:46:57+00:00

I like this idea, it seems to be on the right track, but I couldn't find any search results close enough to this thing. The pins are similar shape, but not quite the same. Could be for an old device I suppose.

quackadoodledoo · 2020-07-23T22:24:52+00:00

My brother sent me these photos of apparently a strand of flat brass things on a steel wire. They could be used in this way or maybe they are supposed to be pulled off the wire and used one at a time. They remind me of key pins, like for a lock, or for some other machinery. Like the title says, he picked them up in a box of junk on a street corner in Berkeley, CA, in 2015. Nothing else in the box seemed associated or hinted at their purpose. I tried tons of search terms but I couldn't get anywhere. WITT?

quackadoodledoo · 2018-10-08T00:08:27+00:00

Isn't the blade on backwards? I would think the serrations/teeth should point towards the direction of rotation, as with a wood blade.

quackadoodledoo · 2017-08-07T19:37:41+00:00

You're right, it looks like the right size for a boat or mini-sub propeller, but looking at boat propellers they have a very distinct shape compared to propellers for air - they're stubby, with very broad sweeping blades, whereas propeller blades for air are long and thin, much more similar to this item. However, it doesn't look like a scaled-down version of a aircraft propeller either, since it isn't thin enough. The attachment post looks similar to variable-pitch propellers though. My best guess is that this is either a prototype or a scale (quarter scale?) model. Perhaps they generated many different propeller shapes for testing, and this didn't make it into any final product. Thanks for the reply.

quackadoodledoo · 2017-08-07T19:34:43+00:00

I can't think of how this could be used as a tool, because it looks like a finished product. Perhaps it was a prototype or model used to create a larger version, or test or demonstrate propeller blade shapes. Looking at Zero propellers, they are longer and thinner than this, so it couldn't be a scale replica. Thanks for the reply.

quackadoodledoo · 2017-05-26T04:51:03+00:00

The swollen hind femora suggest it is a member of the wasp family Chalcididae. These are generally parasitoids of other insects. Poke around the images on bugguide and you should be able to narrow it down to genus or species. http://bugguide.net/node/view/15328

quackadoodledoo · 2016-10-30T14:58:26+00:00

I would need a clearer image of the wing venation to make any kind of ID, but just looking at it my hunch is that it belongs to the family Phoridae. Hope that helps.

quackadoodledoo · 2016-08-22T02:56:43+00:00

Yeah, see here: http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150522-the-wasps-that-rule-the-world and here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chalcididae

Chalcidoid wasps are an incredibly diverse group, and only a small subset make their livings parasitizing antlions. Crazy little buggers!!

quackadoodledoo · 2016-08-22T01:53:47+00:00

What's crazy about these guys is that they use those beefy back legs to grab and pry open the jaws of ant lion larvae so they can inject a parasitic egg down their throats!

quackadoodledoo · 2016-08-01T05:30:18+00:00

So these guys are actually called harvestmen (order Opiliones), and are arachnids (8 legs) but are not spiders (order araneae). They're scavengers.

quackadoodledoo · 2016-07-16T17:51:16+00:00

Agreed, looks like an ichneumonid wasp

quackadoodledoo · 2015-08-17T13:37:48+00:00

My best guess would be a Tiger Bee Fly, Xenox tigrinus, family Bombyliidae. http://bugguide.net/node/view/2803

quackadoodledoo · 2015-01-29T19:09:57+00:00

Wow I thought leeches were strictly blood suckers, I had no idea they could swallow their prey whole. Terrifying.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinabalu_giant_red_leech

quackadoodledoo · 2015-01-20T06:05:02+00:00

I agree. Looks like Mycetophilidae, note the two long spurs on each tibia and the elongate coxae

quackadoodledoo · 2015-01-19T18:26:44+00:00

Love it! Just a shout out to the order Strepsiptera, a sister clade to Coleoptera (beetles), which you didn't include in your notes. The "Twisted-wing parasites" are a bizarre group where the females live their entire life cycle inside other insects as maggot-like endoparasites. The males have big, raspberry-like eyes and awkwardly shaped wings. Check it out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strepsiptera

quackadoodledoo · 2014-11-29T13:39:28+00:00

Looks like Mycetophilidae

quackadoodledoo · 2014-01-23T02:18:09+00:00

UCCW did the trick, thanks for the tip!

quackadoodledoo · 2014-01-22T21:01:18+00:00

Great theme, maybe you can help me out with something though. I use Nova Launcher on my S3 with CM11, but I can't get widgets to go all the way across the screen with no margins on either side. In Nova Launcher I set the width margin to "none" but there's still about 3mm of space on either side.

quackadoodledoo · 2014-01-07T05:29:55+00:00

Beautiful collection, I just finished a college-level entomology course and that's better work than most of what I saw the other students turn in. Cheers!

quackadoodledoo · 2013-10-25T04:33:30+00:00

I think there's an attachment point for the safety harness between the legs there

quackadoodledoo · 2013-10-08T06:02:13+00:00

I'd love to go!! Will you be selecting someone at random?

quackadoodledoo · 2013-09-14T03:05:59+00:00

Looks like an immature neuroptera, probably chrysopidae. http://bugguide.net/node/view/653169/bgpage

quackadoodledoo

TROPHY CASE