Insect pooter

Here's a simple way to get a good view of some of those weird and wonderful mini-beasts that live in and around your house and garden without harming them.

The technical name for the device used to gently suck up insects into a collecting jar is a pooter. In essence, a pooter is just two pipes going into a small transparent container. Scientists use them for collecting insects without damaging them. Since making mine I've mainly used it for taking spiders outside.

The piping I used for mine was a flexible brewing or aquarium type of hosing with about a 1cm bore. If you're after bigger insects then hosepipe would probably work too. Cut one length of the pipe to about 40cm and the other to about 10cm.

You need to make two holes in the metal lid of your jar. Remove the lid and with great care cut in two crosses with a small strong knife and push the pipes through.

Because you're using suction to collect the insects you don't want air leaks, so make a seal where the pipes go through the lid with tape.

With the lid back on the jar, the idea is to suck on the short pipe and hoover up insects through the long pipe.

I initially thought that if the short pipe went just a little way into the jar and the long pipe went nearly to the bottom of the jar, then the incoming insect wouldn't end up in my mouth. Wrong! I swallowed the first fly I tried it on.

My mark II design has a small piece of cloth tied over the end of the short pipe that I suck on. I used an old-fashioned gauze type of dishcloth, but I imagine net curtain would work well too. It's best not to use tape for this job in case any sticky part of the tape is still exposed – an insect's fragile legs could easily get stuck to it and damaged.

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