The Bug Murders

Legendary photographer Weegee became famous for photographing murder scenes in New York in stark detail. And now we can bring you the entomological equivalent, thanks to Volker Steger, a photographer based in Munich, Germany. He found a way of getting the bugs killed by his car into a scanning electron microscope, revealing the wreckage of their tiny bodies in incredible detail. Getting the fragile remains into the SEM intact was not going to be possible by simply scraping the bugs off the windscreen, so Steger stuck clear plastic over his headlights. Once the dead insects had been collected, he simply cut them out and loaded them up. They were nice and dry already, he told me, presumably from the wind. But Steger found his driving speed was critical ??? between 70 and 90 km/h (42 and 54 mph) was perfect. Below that and nothing died, above it and all that was left was amorphous splatter. He says it seems the abdomen of the insect is the part that strikes the car first and kills it, probably because it is the heaviest part. The head and wings were often intact.