Wasps with Oysters
What’s the strangest thing you’ve ever been asked to make at work?
Installing a new exhibit at London Zoo today, I met all-round troubleshooter Dave Hitchcock. He’s been asked to build everything from an electronic ejaculator for gazelles to a tiny tracking system, just like an Oyster Card, for Panamanian paper wasps.
Attached to the back of female wasps, the tagging devices enabled the insects to ‘touch in and out’ as they flew into their nests. In 2007, ZSL scientist Seirian Sumner used data collected by the tagging system to find out how often female wasps drifted from nest to nest. She discovered the wasps were busy commuters – over half of them drifted from nest to nest, rather than staying at home.
This week Dave’s been showing us how to encase DV cameras in resin, so we can put them under the sprinklers in the zoo’s butterfly house.
