Fungus farming ants, digital bees, composting worms, metamorphic caterpillars -- how can these all be bugs? In this episode, Andrew & Polly dive deeper into the world of the squiggly and the wriggly, parsing out the differences between insects and other things that crawl around a garden.
Avery talks to us about bugs in computer code and how she built a pollination video game with a Raspberry Pi. Izaiah updates us about the worms in the compost pile on his farm. And our friends at Valle de Niños in San Francisco take us on a tour of the life cycle of caterpillars.
Thanks to Christina Foust of the Raspberry Pi Foundation (www.raspberrypi.org) for connecting us with young coders participating in Coolest Projects USA, a technology science fair celebrating digital making. Thanks again to entomologist Chris Wheeler, conservation scientist Sergio Avila from the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, and our friends Izaiah, Avery, Ada, Ainsley, Dominic, Teacher Zoe, the Bugg Family, Nathan, Harrison, Alex, Zoe and Luke for deep diving into so many bugs!
Featured ideas & vocabulary:
insect body parts (head, thorax, abdomen, compound eyes, antennae, mandible)
ecosystem
allomones
coding languages
hexopods
cocoon v chrysalis
migration