OMG. Adhesive Putty Discovery! Daniel Yuan (volunteer in our lab) showed me some Yellow Handitak putty (normal people use this to put posters on the wall or pictures of their "children" on the frig) and I thought I would give it a go on a very tiny beetle (see in comparison to pins in photo) that I am of the notion is a buprestid. I simply stuck the putty on the end of a pin and lightly touched the beetle in a petri dish and it stuck...I swung it about and it did not fall off! Good by glue for our picture taking. All sorts of things come to mind now. I have ordered some white putty (sadly black putty seems not to exist) so we don't have to deal with yellow blobs in pictures (hmmm, maybe I could cover the rest of the ball with glitter (maybe not, bad for baby dolphins), or sand...beads? ... poppy seeds?)). This mini-beetle from the MAGLEV Beltsville Research Center trainyard site. Just when you thought there was nothing new under the sun, and then, boom, Adhesive Putty.
