I spent 15 minutes lying on my belly on a wooden bridge watching Water Striders on the surface of a tiny creek. I was much less fascinated by the insects themselves than I was by their shadows on the mud below.
According to the Internet, Water Striders walk on the surface due to the “special hierarchical structure of the legs, which are covered by large numbers of oriented tiny hairs (microsetae) with fine nanogrooves”.
Whatever. I just think the shadows are hilarious. They have a personality all their own.
That’s pretty cool.
Weird though. This post didn’t show up in my Google Reader. I happened to see it on the rare occasion that I actually looked at your home page.