It’s a stoop. Other suggestions included a flutter, and a buzz. When entomologists come together at the annual exhibition of the British Entomological and Natural History Society, at Imperial College, they do two things: they talk incessantly in a strange dialect of copious Latin verbiage and abstruse jargon, and they stoop.
The stooping is done over glass-topped display boxes showing the latest finds or discoveries. Here is the evidence.
This is one of my favourite meetings of the entomological year. It’s a chance to meet the faces behind the emails and the journal articles, to catch up and exchange the entomological news of the last 12 months, have a bit of a moan about the weather and pick up the latest books and journals.
OK, they do a fair bit of drinking beer too, but it’s the stooping that captures the mood of the day. So, there you have it — a stoop of entomologists.
Richard Jones
Bugman Jones 
Is there anyone in your organisation who might help me?
I have been bitten (I think) by a spider (?) and people think it may be a
Recluse Spider (Loxosceles reclusa). Although plentiful in S Africa and America there don’t appear to be any in England – or are there??
I live in Cornwall. Could this be a case of migration due to climate change. NB Medical profession totally baffled by my affliction.
Please reply.
Peter
It’s extremely unlike to be a recluse, and you would certainly know about it if one bit you. Although deaths are uncommon, excruciating pain and ulcerating tissue damage would have been evident. We are very lucky in the UK that we have only a handful of spiders with jaws powerful enough or fangs long enough to inflict a bite. The usual culprit is the woodlouse spider, Dysdera crocata, a pretty pink thing that specializes in eating woodlice. There are a couple of others, perhaps most notably the false widows, Steatoda nobilis and S. grossa, which sometimes live in garages or out buildings. Regards Richard
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