Hi, everyone!

Greetings from Indonesia! I am Tafia. Last October, I participated in the Bali Fab Island Challenge with Manu Prakash and the team 'Looking Closer with Prakash Labs' where I got to see and learn how to use Foldscope. This is my first-ever Microcosmos post (finally! haha) after countless times Manu told me to make a post here. This one is about some kind of larvae when it was still alive and how it changed after it was dead.

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A while ago, I did a biomaterial explorations for a speculative food design project that I tried to make from kitchen waste. One of the things that I attempted to experiment was to ferment vegetable waste with miso paste. Long story short, that one didn't work out. Instead of fermented food, I found other things -larvaes/maggots- living in there.

I'm not really sure what kind of larvae it was specifically, but here's how it look like through foldscope. These first set of visuals were taken when it was still alive.

The Head

The Internals

It's fascinating to see the living mechanism in action, like when it tried to move its body and how its internal organs are connected eventually to its mouth.

Three days later, I went back to check on the sample again. It turned red-brownish in color (previously was yellowish white). Turns out, it's dead. So here's how the dead larvae look like through foldscope.

The Head

The Internals





Networks of....Blood Vessels?



The thing that I noticed right away looking at the now-dead sample, aside from its darkening color, was how there are many black fibers-like networks that become visible after it's dead. They surround mostly every part of the larvae's organs and body, so I think it might be the larvae's circulatory system, like its blood vessels, or perhaps neural networks? What do you think?


Let me know if you have any thoughts or comments about this sample!

See you next time!