Friday, June 12, 2009

Armadillidiidae gonna eat you

Along the same lines as the guppy teeth, here are a couple of neat images I took of an Armadillidiidae (sometimes called a potato bug or pillbug).
I remember my friend trying to fry one of these guys with a magnifying lens when we were kids. The poor thing rolled up in it's little ball and a minute later we heard it sizzling. But I guess that's no worse than what this guy went though in order for me to be able to put him into the microscope. Sample processing for SEM of biological material consists of fixation with aldehydes and Osmium tetroxide, dehydration with a graded series of alcohol, something called critical point drying, and finally sputter coated with gold. Obviously the insect wasn't alive during all of this. I put him in the refrigerator beforehand. The cold puts them into a sleeping/hibernation mode. Likely he felt no pain.
These images were captured on a Hitachi 2700 SEM.

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