Suspended animation
I read once* that it was possible for insects to go into a form of suspended animation when they are exposed to cold. They freeze, but on thawing, can survive OK.

So, being of a scientific mind, I tried it, using a convenient cranefly, and some liquid nitrogen.

I trapped the beastie in a little box, and poured in some liquid N₂.

The experiment was entirely successful until I tried to reanimate it, when despite my best coaxing attempts, I could not discern any form of life in the insect.

A subsequent repeat of the experiment with a second cranefly was even less successful, when I managed to break off all of its limbs, which become remarkably brittle at -196°C.

Actually, I'm not really sure this falls under 'accidental' cruelty...

*I don't think this was exactly New Scientist or Nature material - any tame b3tard biologists care to elaborate on the possibility of this being true?
( K2k6 has a proper job these days, Thu 6 Dec 2007, 14:15, 7 replies)

Finally!
A use for my Zoology degree in a QOTW!
Some insects can, under the right conditions, survive being frozen.
The best example of this is a kind of cricket called the Weta (or W3ta, for the purposes of today), and it has something along the lines of an "anti-freeze protein" in their major organs .
I doubt you managed to find one of them,as I think they live in the mountains of New Zealand, so chances of stumbling across one is low-ish...
Most other insects die at about -5 C, and I think the only thing that enjoys being at -196 is icecream.
( Cawl, Thu 6 Dec 2007, 14:27, closed)

Killed by cold
Yay! Biology! Ahem, I mean, hmmmn, interesting...

To the best of my knowledge (which is based on humans, not insects!) you can kill something with cold one of two ways...
You can make it quite cold so that the chemical reactions within it's cells slow down leading to a build up of toxic products, or you can make it very cold and ice crystals will form in it's cells and will mess with the cell membranes.

As you froze it with liquid N2 I don't think either of these things happened, if you make animal cells extremely cold they will freeze before toxic products can build up and before ice crystals form.

I recon your insect died because you heated it back up too slowly (you can get the toxic product build up thing here too.) Maybe repeat the experiment using a 32C water bath?

I am going to sneak a N2 cylinder out of my lab tonight and see if I can freeze me some students! If any of you are around in Leeds tonight watch out, mwmahahahaaaaa...
(Lord of Marzipan Fact: Clouds are worse than Hitler, Thu 6 Dec 2007, 14:51, closed)

Anecdote alert
But I used to share a house with a biologist who as part of her PhD used to trap moths and other flying wing-ed creatures and knock them out and freeze them for study at a later date. She told me that she has seldom been as terrified as the night she went into the lab, took a tray of pinned fuzzy flying things out of the freezer to make room for another tray and was startled by the sound of a gigantic creature pinned to the board which had woken up from its cryogenic slumber and was not happy.

And that's why I prefer to work in the lab with purely inanimate objects. And I'm not talking about my work collegues. Well, actually...
(Rakky (forgot her password) The muffin maverick, Thu 6 Dec 2007, 14:52, closed)

.
Yes, it's true, but liquid nitrogen is never going to work - far too cold. Freezer cold is good. There's an old street-magic trick using the principle that I've seen first-hand and always wanted to do. Freak-out a few religious types with etc.

- Catch a fly without harming it, covering it in flypaper-type shit or anything that would be obvious (how the fuck you're supposed to do that I don't know).

- Put it in a box, put the box in the freezer for an hour or so (exactly how long I'm unsure of, I imagine it might need to be a fairly specific length of time)

- Take the box out, deposit the fly upside down on a window ledge.

- Go get your mark, show them the 'dead' fly and say "watch this"

- Show them that you have no live flies up your sleeves, pick up the 'dead' one, put it in the palm of your hand and start commanding it to live again, chanting, etc.

- The heat from your hand will take about a minute or so to warm it through, at which point it'll freak out and fly off (rightly so!)

- Voila, you have the power to resurect the dead.
(misanthrope is so adjective he's verbing nouns!, Thu 6 Dec 2007, 14:59, closed)

Gosh
What an educated bunch b3tards are.

So I'll need to find some sort of less cold refrigerant and try it again. It's a pity insects are so few and far between in Scotland in December.

I also did a series of experiments on flies once, using different solvents to see what effect they would have.

I'll post that separately.
( K2k6 has a proper job these days, Thu 6 Dec 2007, 15:06, closed)

Lack of insects?
I'm sure there are plenty of flying rats there... Slightly more cruel, but far less researched...
( Cawl, Thu 6 Dec 2007, 15:24, closed)

Tried this once on an ant.
At one of the usual family barbeques, I was sitting with my family on the deck when we noticed an ant crawling across one of the tables.
The subject of suspended animation came up, and we decided to experiment on the ant.
Someone got an ice cube and placed it on top of the offending ant.
Within a minute, the ant had stopped moving and wouldn't respond to any stimulus.
So we sat and watched to see if it would come back to life, and sure enough, after a few more minutes, it started slowly moving again.
As soon as it recovered completely, I squished it.
It was an ant, after all.
(Betsy Braddock Thee before thine, except after thou., Thu 6 Dec 2007, 23:51, closed)