Sexy robot crabs, dancing cockatoos, and Mars as you've never seen it

Hello, friends!

How have you been? I’ve been having a fairly busy August, but it’s all good because I’m really enjoying the pieces I’m working on and can’t wait to share them with you when they’re ready!

Coming up:

🌠 how to spot some shooting stars this week

🕊️ the kit you’d need to fly like a bird

☢️ what happened to the guy who put his head inside a particle accelerator

Let’s go!

read all about it

Wavy Dave, a robot fiddler crab deployed to study crustacean flirting, gets some serious side-eye: “The females realised he was a bit odd, and some of the males tried to fight him,” said the study’s lead author Dr Joe Wilde. “One male broke Wavy Dave by pulling off his claw. We had to abandon that trial and reboot the robot.” (Cosmos)

So that’s what happens if you put your head inside a particle accelerator: In 1978 Anatoli Bugorski was inspecting a malfunctioning piece of equipment at a physics lab when he accidentally got in the way of a high-energy beam of protons. Incredibly, he survived. (IFLScience)

A farewell to Jim Lovell, commander of the perilous Apollo 13 mission, who died last Thursday at the age of 97: “You had to pinch yourself,” Lovell said of Apollo 8, the first crewed mission to orbit the Moon. “Hey, we’re really going to the Moon!… You know, this is it!” (Ars Technica)

📷 See what Mars would look like under a clear blue sky: It doesn’t really look like that – the sky is blue in the image due to how it was processed – but it’s pretty cool. (Space)

🎥 Watch Wavy Dave in action: …and its seriously crabby opposition. (IFLScience)

that time when…

…we worked out what gear we’d need to fly like a bird (13 August 1960)

“A 154-pound [70kg] man equipped with 66 pounds [30kg] of flight accessories would need wings about 10 feet [3m] long with a flight surface of 60 square feet [6 square metres],” calculated Drs E. Guerra and B. Gunther of the University of Chile, as reported by Science News Letter.

“To maintain a speed of 45 to 50 miles per hour, he should flap his wings 35 times a minute or a little faster than once every two seconds.”

This work is equivalent to walking up 30 steps a minute, the report continues. “Under the right conditions, a man would be able to keep up this pace for from five to 30 minutes.” Maybe put a crash mat down first, though.

what’s happening this week?

Your agenda for Monday 11 August – Sunday 17 August.

All times are BST, and all sky views are from London.

look around you

🔭 in a sky near you: The Perseid meteor shower peaks tonight! It’s one of the most generous meteor showers of the year, offering 50 to 100 shooting stars an hour, and falling at a time of year where being outside after dark for hours isn’t a test of endurance.

If you’re in a place where the sky is big and dark, get yourself into a comfortable position for looking up, like in a deckchair, let your eyes adjust and wait.

Sure, the Moon will be pretty bright on the night, but this won’t dampen the show too much – according to Space, moonlight only hides faint meteors. The Perseids are showy lads that occasionally leave streaks that linger for a bit, so we should still get a good showing.

The Perseids will be active until 24 August, so plenty of time to get some shooting star spotting in.

👀 closer to Earth: Keep an eye out for brimstones, the yellow butterfly that’s said to give the insect its name, which mature at this time of year.

📽️ Watch the lifecycle of a brimstone, from egg to flutterby. (I just watched this *closely* and am still bamboozled by that surely impossible metamorphosis. I mean, what the hell, evolution?)

online talks and events

Just the one this week!

🦎 Noodle bodies, gyroscope ears, and phantom girdles – limb reduced lizards, with Dr Marco Camaiti, online talk by the Linnean Society, Wednesday 13 August, 12.30, free

we finally know…

…the 10 most common dance movements in cockatoos. (PLoS One)

Source: Lubke N, Held SD, Massaro M, Freire R (2025) Dance behaviour in cockatoos: Implications for cognitive processes and welfare. PLoS One 20(8): e0328487.

we need answers

Last week I asked:

Marie Cordery is believed to be the first baby born on the London Underground, in Elephant and Castle station on 13 May 1924. Did you spot it? The initials of the name the papers gave her spell ‘TUBE’.

until next week…

This week’s teaser has been (lovingly) nicked from the latest Lateral podcast:

“What is the only food that humans regularly eat that isn’t produced by a living organism?”

Answer comes next week. See you then! x