Quote Originally Posted by adamanteus View Post
I'm not really a bug fan... never really saw the attraction of stick insects, but if it's useful to anyone, here's an anecdote....

When I was about 10 years old I acquired a group of stick insects from the biology lab at school. I soon became bored (as 10 year olds do) so I decided to find out how stick insects react to alcohol...... I injected pure (as pure as you can get) ethanol into the anus of one large specimen.... quite a large dose too!
The results? The bug hung motionless from a twig, hanging by one foot, for several days. It then recovered completely, showing no long term adverse effects.
I can't remember if it ever sang 'Auld Lang Sine'.

Hey! I was ten years old!
We did something like that to a group of Idothea balthica and Idothea chelipes (marine isopods) last spring. They were supposed to be euthanized as a part of an experiment. We started with something like a 25% solution. No effect, the little buggers kept swimming around like nothing ever happened. Then we tried with the purest stuff they had in the lab, had them in there for 20 minutes. Still no effect. I think I heard one of them ask for the wine list.

No wonder arthropods have been around for 500+ million years.