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Transcription of Science Time video – Insects and Spiders
The video for this transcript can be found on the Questacon website at:
http://canberra.questacon.edu.au/sciencetime/
Transcription from video:
Dion Hi, welcome to Questacon Science Time. My name is Dion.
BJ And I’m BJ.
Dion And today we’re talking about insects and spiders. Come with us.
BJ Let’s go.
Dion So, hello everyone. Who’s got insects and spiders at home. Hands up who has insects and spiders at home. You do? What sort of insects and spiders does everyone have at home?
Child I’ve got a redback.
Dion You’ve got a redback? Does anyone else have a redback at home? Do we go near spiders if we see them at home?
Children No!
Child I saw one in my garden on day.
Dion Did you see one in your garden? You might have seen a spider in your garden as well. They can be all over the place. When you see a spider though, who do you fetch do you think?
Child Mummy or Daddy.
Dion Yes, Mum or Dad you fetch, well done. Now, what other insects do you have at home.
Child You get a broom to kill spiders.
Dion You can get a broom to shoo them away as well. Now, what other insects do you have at home? What sort of insects, does anybody know?
BJ Some in your garden at home.
Dion I’ve actually got an insect here. I’ve got a pretend insect. We’re going to look at this insect here. What is this insect, does anyone know?
Child Grasshopper.
Child That’s a toy.
Dion It’s a grasshopper. It is a toy.
Child A grasshopper.
Dion It’s a grasshopper. Has anyone ever seen a grasshopper before? Hands up if you have.
Children I have. I have.
Dion And what colour is this grasshopper?
Children Green.
Dion Green, well done. Now, we have some things on this grasshopper’s head here. Does anyone know what they are called?
Child Antenna
Child Ears.
Dion Antenna, well done. They are called antenna. And antenna are a little bit like insect hands. Does this insect have hands?
Children No, yes.
Dion No, I think it would look a little bit silly with hands actually. So it uses it’s antenna to feel with like we use our hands. Now, how many legs do you think this grasshopper has?
Child Two!
Dion Two?
Child Five.
Child Six.
Dion Well how about we count them all together. We’re going to count them all together. Ready?
Everyone One, two, three, four, five, six.
BJ You were right.
Child I said six.
Dion You went very well. I’m very impressed.
Child Can we play with that?
Dion We can play with it very, very soon. But first we’re going to look at another insect now. This one here. Now what is this insect? Does anybody know?
Children A bee.
Dion It looks a little bit like a bee, doesn’t it. It could be a fly as well. It’s got it’s antenna at the top and it’s also got some legs. How many legs does this bee or fly have?
Child One, two, three, four.
Dion We’ll count them all together, ready? We’ll count them all together.
Everyone One, two, three, four, five, six.
Dion Six legs. This one’s got six. So the grasshopper has six and the fly has six as well. So we’ll look at another insect. This is a bit harder, you may not have seen one of these before.
Child That’s a stick insect.
Dion It looks a lot like a stick insect. Does anyone know what this isect is called?
Child No.
Dion This is called a praying mantis. Can everyone say praying mantis?
Everyone Praying mantis.
Dion This you may have seen in your garden as well.
Child And it can spray water.
Dion It may beable to spray water. It’s got these weird legs at the front. We’re going to count them all together and we’ll see how many it’s got. Ready?
Everyone One, two, three, four, five, six.
Dion Six legs again. So our grasshopper, our fly and our praying mantis all have six legs. Now, this is one of my favorite insects. What is this one here?
Children Butterfly.
Dion It’s a butterfly, well done. Has anyone got, hands up who has butterflys at home.
Children Me. Me.
Dion Have you got butterflys at home? They are very pretty. What colour’s this butterfly?
Children Blue, purple, black.
Dion Blue and a bit purple and black as well. Very pretty. Now, butterflys also have six legs as well. So they are insects. So we have all of our insects have six legs.
Child No, they’ve got two legs.
Dion It’s actually got six on the bottom. Six legs. So do all of these animals, all these insects do they look the same or different?
Children Different
Dion They do look different, don’t they. They don’t look the same
Child But this looks different.
Dion It does look different. But all of these insects, even though they look really different, all have six legs. Another thing they have is also three body parts. So they have a head, something called a thorax and an abdomen as well. All those different bits there. So they have three body parts. So, six legs and three body parts our insects have. Now I’ve got another creature here. We have to decide what is this creature. Can anyone tell me what is this creature?
Children A spider.
Dion A spider. Now, is a spider and insect do you think?
Children No. No.
Child It’s an arachnid.
Dion Yes, well done! I’ve very impressed. The spider isn’t actually an insect. It’s something called an arachnid. Can everyone say arachnid?
Everyone Arachnid.
Dion Well done. And how many legs does a spider or an arachnid have?
Children Eight! Eight.
Dion Well, let’s count and have a look. Ready?
Everyone One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.
Dion It’s got eight legs. So is that more or less than an insect?
Children More.
Dion It’s got more, hasn’t it? So an insect has six legs and a spider has eight legs. Now, a spider also has two body parts when the insect has got three. So they’re a bit different. A bit different. So spiders are arachnids.
Child It’s yellow and black.
Dion Very, very true. Well done. So have you got any of these insects at home? Hands up who’s got one of these insects at home. You might have had lots of different insects at home like these ones. So what we’re going to do now is –
BJ We’ve got a real insect. I’ll go get it.
Dion We do have a real insect. So we’re going to have a look at our real insect now. This insect is called a golieth stick insect. And it’s green. Now why do you think the stick insect is green?
Child ‘Cause it goes on sticks and…
Dion Because it goes on sticks and leaves and it can hide. So this is our golith stick insect. Now, is this a big insect of a small insect?
Children Big!
Dion It’s a big insect, isn’t it? And we’ll count her legs, ready? This is Sticky and we’ll count her legs.
Everyone One, two, three, four, five, six.
Dion So is Sticky an insect?
Children Yes.
Dion Yes, it is because she’s got six legs.
Child That one is like this one.
Dion It is. It looks a little bit like our praying mantis. And it’s got the same amount of legs. So we’ve got lots of different insects in our gardens. And this one, she likes to eat gum leaves and all that sort of stuff and she has to eat quite a lot to keep her self healthy because she is a very big insect. So everyone, ready set go. Find you grown-up and explore the room. See what you can play with. Go have a play.
BJ Go have a play, off you go.
Dion See what you can find.
BJ While everyone here is having a play. Let’s go have a closer look at spiders. Come with me. Hello boys and girls. Todays we’re going to have a closer look at spiders. Here, look on my hand. I’ve got a toy spider here. How many legs does a spider have, do you remember? That’s right. Eight. Let’s count. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. This is a toy spider. But, today at Questacon we are very luck to have a real, live spider. Her name is Savina. Let’s have a closer look. Now, Savina is a trananchela spider. Another name for tranachela’s is whitleing spiders because they rub parts of their body together to make a hissing, whitling sound. Now, you can see she has eight legs. Can you see all her legs? And she has two body parts. One at the front where all the legs are attached and that big, round one at the back. And at the very back she has a little bit sticking out and that’s where her spinning web comes out of. Now, tranachelas don’t live in a web up in a tree. They live on the ground. Often in a little hole. And they line their hole with nice, soft spider web just like putting carpet on the floor. Now, Savina here, the tranachela, she likes to eat insects. Sometimes little baby frogs or lizards. And sometimes even other spiders. Yep. But Savina, she’s looking a little bit tired at the moment, isn’t she? She’s not moving around much at all. So I think we’ll leave Savina to have a bit of a sleep. And while she’s sleeping let’s go back to Science Time and check out what everyone’s doing.
Dion So, we’ve talked about a lot of different sorts of insects and spiders today. And now we’re going to talk about something called camoflage. Now, does anyone know, what is camoflage?
Child Hiding.
Dion Well done, it is hiding. So here we’ve got a picture of a spider trying to camoflage. So can anyone see the spider? (sitting down on your bottom for me, sitting down). Can you see the spider? He’s hiding pretty well, isn’t he? He’s doing a really good job this spider. And this spider is using camoflage. Now, animals can camoflage is a couple of different ways. They can try to camoflage with colour, like this spider here. And they can also pretend to be something else that they’re not. Now, we’re going to have a look at this butterfly now. What colour is this butterfly?
Child Blue. Purple
Dion Blue and purple, well done. Now we’re going to have this – if the butterfly flys and lands in this flower here do you think it’s very well hidden?
Children No.
Dion No, not really. You can see it pretty easyly, can’t you? So It’s not really camoflaged. Now if we get this flower and our butterfly flyes and lands on this flower is it hidden now? It’s pretty well hidden isn’t it. It’s well camoflaged. It’s using it’s colour to try to hide on the flower. So we’re going to look at some different insects now that camoflage. We’re going to have a look at some stick insects.
Child I saw them.
Dion Have you seen them before?
Child Me to. Me to.
Dion Now, stick instects, they also use colour and they also pretend to be something. They look a lot like sticks. We have some baby stick insects here. We’re going to open it up and have a look at some of these baby stick insects. Here we are. Now these are really, really small insects. I’m going to take one out now. We’re going to have a look at our stick insect and see how well they camoflage. If I can get him out. He’s a little friskey. They are very, very young these ones. There we are. Now, can you all see that our stick insect looks a lot like a stick. Can you see? So, this is the camoflage that the stick insect uses, it pretends to be a stick and it also uses colour as well. Do you think you’d beable to see this on a tree?
Child There’s ones on the leaves.
Dion There are the ones on the leaf as well. There are all sort of different insects that us camoflage. So we’ve got some things now for you guys to take home with you. And boys and girls at home you can get these ones as well. First of all we have a parent information sheet which gives you and idea of things that you can do at home. Activities and all that sort of stuff. Sitting on your bottoms for me guys. Sitting on your bottoms. Good work.
Child There’s one at the glass.
Dion There is one at the glass. Now we also have a colouring in sheet. Now can anyone tell me what is this in the colouring in sheet.
Child A spider.
Dion It’s a spider. And how many legs does a spider have?
Child One, two, three, four, five…
Dion Eight. Eight legs. They’ve got eight legs spiders. And how many legs does and insect have?
Child One, two…
Dion Six. Six legs. Spiders have eight legs and our insects have six legs. And you can colour these ones in at home which is quite a lot of fun. Now before we go we’re going to all look at the boys and girls at home. Can everyone look at the boys and girls at home. Wave to the boys and girls at home and say see you next Science Time.
Everyone See you next Science Time.
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