On April 19, 2016, every afternoon after school, Liu Kaitai, a seventh-grade student at Beijing Yuying School, always sneaked into the laboratory next to the teaching building and stayed for an hour or two: Are the baby moths about to pupate being parasitized? Is it time for the thin cockscomb spade over there to change the soil? The larvae of the unicorn fairy are not still more than a little water sprayed...
Liu Kaitai wanted to be a "Chinese Fabre" when he was 6 years old.
In addition, there are larvae of the white star flower golden beetle, two-point red saw shovel pupae, and various varieties of moth pupae are waiting for his "interrogation" - these laymen have a bit of a difficult name to read, and they are all treasures that Liu Kai talks about too much. Not "waiting" one by one every day, the whole day is like missing something. And the laboratory named after him on this side has made a comfortable home for the babies he has in mind.
The first acquaintance with the celestial cow only fed for two days
To talk about Liu Kaitai's "insect complex", it is really surprising. When Liu Kaitai was 4 years old, his grandfather took him home from kindergarten, and in order to coax his grandson to be happy on the way, his grandfather caught a tianniu that he used to play with when he was a child from a tree. This made Liu Kai, who had never seen Tianniu, love it too much, staring at the water bottle containing Tianniu, and his eyes were reluctant to blink. However, the good times were not long, Liu Kaitai's fate with this tianniu only lasted less than two days, and he did not like this insect enough, and the little tianniu was "heroically sacrificed".
This is the earliest memory of Liu Kaitai's association with insects. This is not a very good first marriage, but it makes Liu Kaitai have the desire to protect, "Can't let the insects in my house can't live, this is very unfair to others." Young Liu Kaitai began to consciously want to know, is there any way to make the little insects live longer and better? As a result, the grass downstairs and the small ditches in the community have since become Liu Kaitai's paradise, and he wants to better imitate the wild living environment at home by observing the wild homes of small insects.
As the "trauma" brought to Liu Kaitai by the premature death of Tianniu gradually subsided, Liu Kaitai had the wish to observe the insects up close again. Sometimes at night, Liu Kaitai would take a flashlight and go straight to the ditch near the community, involuntarily bumping into what was loaded, and making a whole large bottle of mineral water to take home the insects. But at this time, he could keep an eye on it: pour all the insects into the box, put the leaves on it, and tie the small holes; then look at the pictures and scientific names on the "Insect Encyclopedia" while looking for and identifying, "At the beginning, I saw that what bugs I saw was called scarab beetles, and then I found that all kinds of details were completely different. Liu Kaitai said that sometimes the little bugs he catch can't find any information on the Internet, and he can only grope the habits of these treasures in his hands while raising them.
6-year-old vow to be "China Fabre"
On her 6th birthday, Liu Kaitai received an unforgettable birthday gift: a complete set of ten children's editions of Insects. The entomologist Fabre used the language of the poet to depict those living beings. In his writing, insects are not objects that have been disemboweled, but are infused with loving, intimately observable companions. The concise language, cute color pictures, and lively storyline introduced Liu Kaitai to Fabre's insect world at once. Observing and recording in the garden without worry, and being intimate with these smart, brave and lovely creatures, such a way of life deeply touched Liu Kaitai.
"Ever since I finished reading this set of books, Fabre has become an idol in my mind. So I made up my mind to become The Fabre of China. In the second grade of primary school, Liu Kaitai, who began to grow stronger, finally won the opportunity to follow his father to the Fragrant Mountain to collect insects, one step closer to his goal of "Chinese Fabre". Since then, he has begun a career of "wild picking" that is tireless. "As soon as I arrived at my destination, I heard the grasshoppers and watched the grasshoppers and praying mantises flying around in the grass, and my heart was drunk." Perhaps Fabre's book has been read too many times, and Liu Kaitai's depiction of his encounter with insects is also poetic. When he was 9 years old, Liu Kaitai put the mantis he caught on his screen window, and a week later, the mantis laid eggs. Liu Kai was too happy to be broken, and quickly checked the information, and the book said that the little praying mantis would crawl out of the egg the next summer. Liu Kaitai couldn't wait to see the next summer coming, but to his disappointment, when summer arrived, the little mantis did not crawl out as he wished. Frustrated, Liu Kaitai analyzed it, it should be that the home environment is not suitable for the hatching of mantis eggs.
So, in the autumn of the following year, Liu Kaitai caught a small praying mantis and placed it on the screen window, and stepped up the intensity of observation. Watch as the praying mantis shed two layers of shells, slowly grow and lay eggs, and then the follicles dry out, leaving chewed gum-like marks that cling tightly to the screens. This time, Liu Kaitai carefully scraped the egg off with a small blade, and then gently glued the egg to the stone platform outside the window with transparent glue: the sun was also sheltered from wind and rain, and at the same time there was a change in temperature between day and night, which simulated an environment in a natural state for it. In the late spring of the following year, when the window could be opened for a long time at home, Liu Kaitai moved the eggs from the outdoors to the indoor screen window. It wasn't long before tiny mantis larvae began to slowly emerge. He finally managed to artificially hatch the praying mantis!
Make a home for insects on campus
From the small ditch downstairs to the mountains on the outskirts of Beijing, Liu Kaitai's insect investigation is getting larger and larger, and a major "evil consequence" that follows is that there are more and more treasures in the family. In the bedroom, in the bookcase, in the living room, in the display cabinet, and even in the mother's shoe cabinet, it was either crowded with live insects or filled with insect specimens that were frozen in the eternal moment by Liu Kaitai after the unfortunate "death". The "Insect House" is in urgent need of expansion. When he was looking for a solution, a "big Easter egg" hit Liu Kaitai on the head.
At a flag-raising ceremony in grade 6, Principal Yu Huixiang, who does not often appear at the flag-raising ceremony, talked to the students about "ambition". When the principal mentioned that "children should have their own ambitions from an early age, such as...", Liu Kaitai was expecting the principal to give an example to a great man. But what he didn't expect was that Principal Yu's next words were actually "Classmate Liu Kaitai, is Classmate Liu Kaitai coming?" The dazed Liu Kaitai carefully raised his hands, and before he could fully understand what was going on, he heard the shocking "big Easter egg" that Principal Yu brought to him next: "Two days ago, the CCTV Children's Channel 'Sesame Open Door' program reported his research on biology, and he won the honor for the school, so I am ready to build a laboratory for him!" ”
"My little heart was about to jump out, and I almost sat on the ground!" Today, recalling the scene at that time, Liu Kaitai is still excited.
It turned out that Principal Yu had already heard about his story, and after learning about his difficulties, he took the initiative to support him to open the "Liu Kaitai Insect Research Laboratory" named after him. Liu Kaitai, who has studied insects for several years, is now also well-known, and has twice won the first prize of the Fortune Wings Science and Technology Forum with the papers "A Preliminary Study on the Effect of Light on the Growth of the 3rd Instar Larvae of the White Star Flower Golden Turtle" and "Exploration of the Influence of Environmental Color on the Body Color of the Sickle-tailed Dewhopper". Now, the school not only invited Liu Ye, a doctor of entomology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, as a "mentor" for him, but also equipped with Wang Na, an instructor on campus. A group of young fans who love insects also worship him as a teacher and set up an insect research club together.
Nowadays, for the discipline of biology, Liu Kaitai also has more thinking. In his view, a true biologist never just treats insects as pets, but is always full of reverence for nature and insects, and has a scientifically rigorous attitude towards research, "Insects are worth my life to study, not pets." I hope that I can embark on the path of biological research, never crossing the dividing line between biological research and the loss of playthings. ”
Source: Beijing Evening News, Beiwan New Vision Network reporter Niu Weikun wen and picture
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