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Doctors are surprised by unexpected stowaway during routine colonoscopy: a ladybug.

It was probably ensuring good luck for the unsuspecting patient.

Doctors are surprised by unexpected stowaway during colonoscopy

Getting a colonoscopy is not something anyone looks forward to doing. You have to spend three days prepping for the procedure which includes drinking a "bowel preparation solution." That's just a fancy way of saying "taking an extremely powerful laxative that will have you lying on the bathroom floor too afraid to move because you finally expelled the gum you swallowed in third grade."

Doctors and their fancy words to describe gross things, am I right? But hey, everybody poops. There's even a book about it for parents to read to toddlers who are potty training. The purpose of spending two days counting the tiles your sweat drips onto in the bathroom is to clean out your colon before doctors insert a camera to look for polyps, cancer, and other medical conditions. But when a patient went in for their appointment, doctors discovered something they didn't expect to find: a stowaway that had, somehow, survived the tsunami of poo.

The patient was a 59 year old man who was being seen for a routine colonoscopy, the procedure where they take a small camera equipped with a light and send it up to traverse the colon and large intestine. It's a procedure that becomes part of a full preventative workup once you reach the age of 45 if you're at average risk for colon cancer according to MD Anderson Cancer Center (though doctors are now recommending colonoscopy screenings begin sooner due to rising cases of colon cancer in young people according to the Cancer Research Institute).

 colonoscopy ladybug; ladybug; colonoscopy surprises; bug during colonoscopy; colonoscopy prep Urgent dash to the bathroom! 🚪🏃♂️Photo credit: Canva

When the camera rounded the bend, it caught a clear sight of a perfectly intact ladybug who, despite the likely terror it experienced, was still alive.

The findings of the patient's friendly colon passenger was reported in the 2019 ACG Case Reports Journal complete with pictures of the spotted little fella just hanging out inside a human cavity. While the doctors have no way of determining how the ladybug wound up inside the man's body, they believe it was likely swallowed accidentally and escaped the wing destroying stomach acid due to the bowel preparation solution speeding up the process. The ladybug likely felt like it was on a weird waterslide or, if it's seen The Magic School Bus, it might have assumed Mrs. Frizzle had something to do with its unexpected adventure.

 colonoscopy ladybug; ladybug; colonoscopy surprises; bug during colonoscopy; colonoscopy prep Ladybug unexpectedly found during colonoscopyPhoto credit: The American College of Gastroenterology

“The patient's colonoscopy preparation was 1 gallon of polyethylene glycol the evening before colonoscopy, and the colonoscopy examination was otherwise normal,” the authors of the journal write. “His colonoscopy preparation may have helped the bug to escape from digestive enzymes in the stomach and upper small intestine.”

If you're going to have a bug hang out in your poop chute, a ladybug is likely the preferred unexpected guest. Gastrointestinal specialist Dr. Keith Siau likes to share the things he and his colleagues have found inside patients and a ladybug is probably the least gross option for critters. He's found ants, cockroaches, and bees (yes, bees that help pollinate flowers and sting people who disturb their important business).

 colonoscopy ladybug; ladybug; colonoscopy surprises; bug during colonoscopy; colonoscopy prep Close-up of bottom of ladybug found in colonPhoto credit: The American College of Gastroenterology

People cannot get over doctors finding bugs in people's colons during colonoscopies, while others have jokes about the random bugs found inside people. One person writes, "Oh, that’s just the magic school bus. They transformed into a lady bug for the field trip."

"Don’t take it out until you play the power ball," another says.

"Taking the title of invasive species a little far," somebody jokes.

 

"So I already worry about bugs getting into my ears, now I gotta worry about bugs up my butt? I hate it here," another cries.

"I’ve always had a fear of ingesting a bug or parasite and them finding it one day. I know that’s crazy but I think about it often. Seeing this affirmed my fear of the unknown," someone else shares.

"I could have gladly lived the rest of my life without knowing this." one person writes.

Well, if you're due for your routine colonoscopy here's hoping they don't find any unauthorized critters and you get a clean bill of health.

Science

Is it a bee or is it a fish? It's a bee fish according to California judges.

The issue presented here is whether the bumble bee, a terrestrial invertebrate, falls within the definition of fish."

Bees classified as fish in California.

Save the bees! Even if you have to call them fish to do so. Will they be rainbow trout, red snapper or puffer fish? Maybe they’ll get their own name and be known forever as bumble fish. It’s likely none of those things, but where’s the fun in knowing that a bee will still be called a bee even when it’s classified as a fish?

People have been concerned about bees and their declining numbers for a while. While it’s customary to run screaming in the opposite direction while waving your arms about any time you encounter one in real life, we kind of need those little buggers. Bees and their fuzzy little limbs and torsos help pollinate plants and crops. Bee pollination is extremely important to commercial farmers and keeps our planet looking the way we’re used to seeing it: full of diverse plants and trees. They're actually pretty cute, too.


As much good as bees do for the environment, sadly they have become endangered. The American bumble bee population declined by nearly 90% due to climate change, habitat loss, pesticides and disease. Rapid decline of the bee population is why three judges in California decided to do what they could to protect the bees from extinction by classifying them as fish. In their ruling, the judges wrote, "The issue presented here is whether the bumble bee, a terrestrial invertebrate, falls within the definition of fish."

In 2018, California classified four species of bees as endangered, but the problem is that the law didn’t explicitly protect land invertebrates under the California Endangered Species Act. The law specifies that it protects endangered "native species or subspecies of a bird, mammal, fish, amphibian, reptile, or plant." Because bees are obviously devoid of gills, fins and the ability to survive their entire lives submerged in water, the argument to classify bees as fish was ruled against in 2020. The argument being that the other animals who bear the fish label but aren’t actually fish are invertebrates like sea urchins and anemones.

bees, honeyPhoto by Shelby Cohron on Unsplash

These three judges decided that the lower courts were wrong about excluding bees from the classification. Taking a liberal interpretation of the Endangered Species Act is what has allowed the judges to give bees the new classification, as the law isn’t specific about which invertebrates it's referring to. The judges wrote in their ruling that "although the term fish is colloquially and commonly understood to refer to aquatic species," the legal jargon could be used to justify the inclusion of bees … and frogs. While the judges were at it they decided to throw in frogs as they are protected under the amphibian category.

So there you have it folks. From here on out we shall refer to the bees in California as "bumble fish" and the people who have been fighting for this kind of heightened protection for bees can rejoice. This is a big win for bees and the environment! Now go outside and welcome them with the required greeting as you plant new flowers for them to pollinate.

Hexagons are the best of all polygons.

"What's your favorite shape?" is generally a question we ask 5-year-olds, not grown adults. But maybe if we put it into more advanced terms—"What's the best polygon?"—we'd be compelled to give it some genuine thought.

Since there's an entire field of math dedicated to triangles, that might seem like a logical answer. But, most human-made things around us are made up of rectangles, so maybe they're the best. Then again, there are much more interesting quadrilaterals than squares and rectangles (hey, rhombus!) in addition to pentagons, hexagons, heptagons (which I don't think I've ever even seen), octagons, nonagons—so many "gons" to choose from.

As it turns out, there is an answer to this question—at least according to popular YouTube creator CGP Grey.


The answer? Hexagons. Who knew, right?

If you have doubts that the six-sided shape deserves the title of "best," CGP Grey's video might change your mind.

In it, we see how bees use hexagons to make honeycomb. That's not by accident; it's because hexagons are actually the most efficient shape for tiling. It's the same reason bees' eyes are made up of tons of tiny hexagons—and why the back of our eyes are too.

Snowflakes have six sides, which alone is reason enough for the hexagon to be the bestagon, but the reason they're six-sided is super cool. Saturn has a mysterious, humongous hexagon of gases the size of six Earths, which is weird but also super cool.

But that's just the peripheral stuff. There's a fundamental atomic reason why hexagons are the bestagons—strength and stability which allows hexagons to create the strongest atomic material in the universe.

And, of course, Settlers of Catan.

If you have doubts, let CGP Grey convince you. By the end, you'll have to at least admit that hexagons are pretty darn cool, even if you're partial to some other polygon.

via Macrofying

Ole Bielfeldt, 20, from Cologne, Germany never expected to become a social media sensation. But when he posted a video on TikTok under the handle @Macrofying 16 months ago, he woke up the next morning and it had 7 million views.

"I started the TikTok channel about a year ago, so it's not that old. I've always been interested in photography and especially the different perspectives you could create," he told Reuters.


Bielfeldt's photography videos zoom so deep into objects they give viewers a completely different perspective on things they see every day. "You can go into this macro world of things that you don't see every day," he said.

The videos are so impressive many of his followers think they are fake. "'One of the main questions I get asked is "Is it real?"' Bielfeldt said.

One of the most impressive videos he's made is a journey into the inside of a honeycomb. The video gives a bee's-eye view of the honeycomb's structure and gets down all the way into the sugar crystals that make up the precious honey.


It's not your imagination if you thought you caught a faint outline of Winnie the Pooh at the end—one of Bielfeldt's signatures is overlaying a surprise image at the very end of his zooms.

If you thought that was cool, check out his most popular video macrofying the human hand that has over 125 million views.