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Hi Angus, Steve & al, Nov18, 2009
The earwig thread prompted me to dig out an old e-mail to another site;
pasted below.
Abundant or sparse they must feed something else. No longer abundant
here.
DW
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Mar 9, 2003
On a related note--
Shortly after earwigs appeared in Kentville, and started taking over
lawns & gardens, I wondered about the feasibility of an active earwig
trap, i.e. using electric shock to herd them into traps, so I borrowed
some scrap electronic components that when assembled formed a variable
voltage and harmless low current power supply. To observe behavior when
they were exposed to shocks, I made a small chute of lucite with thin
brass strips spaced such that when an earwig walked along the chute it
closed the circuit. I don't recall the voltages now but, at low voltage
there was no response, at higher voltage they stepped lively and at even
higher voltages tiny sparks from foot hairs could be seen in dim light,
there was sometimes an odor of burning protein and/or earwigs were
stunned and remained immobile for ~5-30 seconds. Their behavior after
being shocked and especially after being stunned, convinced me 1) that
earwigs were just small people with slightly different body parts and 2)
that one should not herd earwigs by electric shocks even if a trap of
this kind could be made to work.
After they came to, they sat back so fore legs were free to move and
laboriously groomed head, antennae and front leg joints (I can't recall
with certainly that mid and hind legs were groomed) apparently using
fluids from the mouth. After this bath, presumably to remove materials
that are released from between joints when under stress, they would
resume normal posture and walk off.
Yours truly, Dave Webster, Kentville
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