Word: thorax
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...Cornell University scientists was studying a flightless Southern grasshopper called Romalea microptera. During egg-laying periods, when the female Romalea has its large abdomen stuck in the soil, and at other times when the grasshopper is vulnerable to attack by ants, it noisily emits from openings in its thorax a foul-smelling, brownish froth that halts predator ants in their tracks. To find out why the liquid is so effective, the scientists, led by Biologist Thomas Eisner, extracted it from several hundred grasshoppers and analyzed its contents. In addition to quinones, phenols, terpenes and other chemicals that are often used...
...fondling the young animals, in keeping with Tors's dictum that "you cannot love without touching." The more dangerous species are stroked on their "affection zones" with long, sponge-tipped "petting sticks," which are gradually reduced in length until an attendant can, for instance, tickle the thorax of a tarantula with his fingers. In "secondary school," the animals are put through an obstacle course in preparation for such script demands as having monkeys cross a chasm using a python as a bridge. For fight scenes, the critters simply wrestle playfully, and the battle noises are dubbed in later; some...
This seemed to prove that the queen's perfume is what makes the workers cluster around her, but Simpson wanted to know what part of her is most attractively scented. So he cut a queen in three pieces-abdomen, thorax and head-and put each in a separate cage. None of the three had much effect on-a queenless cluster, but when the severed parts were crushed, the workers rallied around the crushed head. So the queen's powerful perfume must come from her head, probably from the mandibular glands...
Within a few years he was dabbling in a curious pseudo science called the "lift of inhalation," which maintained that Greek art owed its excellence to the fact that the thorax, not the brain, was the center of the emotions and that all Greek figures were shown consciously inhaling rather than exhaling. After painting the murals for International House at Columbia University in 1924. he suffered a heart attack, went alone to Europe to recuperate. While painting in Florence in 1928, he died. So deeply had he drawn the veil of mystery over his last years that his wife...
...counter. One specimen of Nomophila noctuella, a pale buff moth with a one-inch wingspread, showed a suspiciously high count. He pressed it on X-ray film and found that the radiation was coming not from the moth as a whole but from a single small spot in the thorax...