There’s a plethora of fascinating insects and bugs flying around our planet. here are some interesting facts about them to show how amazing they are.
Insects are crucial to the function of nature and consequently in our everyday lives. They are also fascinating creatures living intriguing and interesting lives right beneath your nose. Here are 10 Fascinating facts of Insect life:
1. Insects come by the billion
As you may have guessed, insects in the world are vastly more numerous than us humans. Estimates are rough and put the amount of insects in existence at present within the range of one to 10 quintillions. This means that there are greater numbers of insects that sand particles that are found on all the beaches of the world. If we were to be able to share all living insects among us it would take 200 million insects for each of us.
They also dominate in terms of number of species. Insects comprise more than half the multicellular species that we have. They’ve existed for longer than we have: Insects have, with a good margin witnessed dinosaurs emerge and vanish. It’s time to acknowledge that insects are plentiful and successful.
2. Ants keep aphids as ‘sugar cattle’
The agricultural revolution began 10000 years ago. At that time the ant population were keeping the aphids as their livestock for around 100 millions of years.
Aphids make a lot of honeydew, which is a sweet excess liquid. Ants gently rub the abdomen of the aphids with their antennas to cause the sweet aphids release their sugary delight. A colony of ants can take in 10-15 kgs of sugar from Aphids during the course of a summer by this method.
Ants have been discovered to “herd” their cattle by limiting the Aphids’ ability to disperse across other species. As we clip goose wings as well as other winged animals Ants may gnaw wings off aphids.
They may also use chemicals that signalize to prevent the growth of winged creatures or limit the amount of time Aphids wander on foot and defend their sugar cows’ from anything which might think of eating their flesh.
3. A fruit fly holds the world record in longest sperm
The tiny fruit flies Drosophila bifurcais one insect whose technology is unrivaled. The tiny creature is a close kin to the fruit flies that can drive you insane within your home. It’s also the proud owner of the world record for the longest sperm in the world: at about 6 centimeters in length It is 20 times bigger than the creature it is.
For males, this could be the equivalent of having sperm with a length of almost like the tennis court!
4. Mealworms can digest plastic
It’s been discovered that mealworms drink isopore cups like they were a part of their diet.
They consume the isopore in record time and the larvae fed the unusual diet pupated, and then hatched into adult beetles just like normal. What remains is carbon dioxide and a speck of poop from beetles, which appears to be pure suitable to be used as a planting soil.
The beetles themselves aren’t performing the task of dissolving the plastic. In order to do this, they depend on a few delightful tenants in their digestive tract. If mealworms are treated with antibiotics that destroy the gut flora capability to degrade plastic disappears. The degrading of plastic is dependent on the combined efforts of the beetle as well as bacteria.
5. A fly can live for days without its head
Carl Linnaeus, the great Swedish biologist who identified our species, put insects into a distinct group. In part, because he believed that they had no brains in the first place. Perhaps that’s not an issue, as when you behead an insect the fly will live just like a normal fly for a number of days. It can fly, walk and mating. In the end it will starve itself to death, since the absence of a mouth means there’s no food.
The reason insects are able to remain headless is because they don’t possess a central brain in their heads. They also have the nerve cord that runs throughout the entire body, and mini brains in every joint. Therefore, a variety of functions can be carried out regardless of whether the head is placed.
6. You can thank a midge for chocolate
The tiny bug is entirely accountable for the coating that is on your biscuits or chocolate bar that enhances your trek. Because in the rainforests, this kin of the stinging midge – called the chocolate midge given up blood in favor of the opportunity to crawl into the cacao blooms.
These gorgeous blossoms are well-constructed. Chocolate midges are among the insects that is able to be a bit of a nuisance and is tiny suitable to be able to crawl inside the cacao flower and be able to pollinate it.
7. Insects saved Australians from drowning in dung
One of the first British fleet that travelled to Australia from 1788 with two oxen and four cows. In the year 1900, there was over a million heads of cattle roaming in Australia but who would clean the mess they left behind?
Dung beetles from the native species have been kept on dry, hard marsupial dung for many millions of years. They definitely had no appetite for foreign food as it was portrayed in the mushy manure from the south Asian Zebu (a breed of cattle domestically).
So, the dung simply left on the ground where it sat until it grew into the form of a hard crust that was unable to be penetrated by as much as a grass blade. In the year 1960, around 200 years following when the cattle first arrived, huge areas of the country were left uncultivated due to the dung that was not broken down.
The new beetles were introduced into the mix. A massive project was put in motion. For fifteen years Australian Entomologists conducted experiments with diverse species. After careful examination, they set the goal of releasing 1.7 million individuals of 43 different species of dung beetles.
The project proved to be a hit. More than half the species were established. The dung escaped, the nutrients returned to the soil, and Australians were spared from drowning in the dung.
8. House flies taste with their feet
If you’re a household fly there aren’t any teeth. It’s a liquid diet. What’s a housefly to do when it land on something delicious, such as your bread slices? It uses digestive enzymes in its stomach to convert your food item into drink.
In order to do this in order to do this, the fly must release certain gastric juices into food. This isn’t great for us humans as it means that the bacteria from the last meal of the fly and possibly not even close to what we would consider to be food might end up in our slices of bread. It’s good for the flies, who may now be able to consume the food.
The mouth of a housefly is similar to the head of a vacuum cleaner that is spongy attached to a short shaft. The entire thing is connected to a type of pump within the head which produces suction, allowing the fly to sift the delicious soup.
9. Wasps produce a super endurance ‘sports drink’
Do you realize that insects that feed on the larvae in an Asian hornet create the substance known as a miraculous product to improve athletic endurance and performance?
Adult hornets are unable to consume solid protein and instead return to their nests feeding their young tiny pieces of meat. As a reward for the pieces from meat, their larvae eat some kind of jelly which adults then consume.
Once people understood that the ingredients of this jelly were vital to the adult hornet’s endurance which allows them to fly 100 km per day at speeds of 40kph, it wasn’t long before products that were marketed specifically at athletes appeared on the market.
The Japanese long-distance marathon runner Naoko Takahashi took home the Olympic gold medal in the marathon for women in Sydney in 2000. She gave part all the glory for her success to the extract of hornets. Can it be effective? Debatable. It certainly does sell.
10. Honey bees can count to four
Honey bees count. Yes, seriously. The distance isn’t too far but the ability to decipher numbers as large as four is quite a remarkable feat for a creature that has the brain size of an sesame seed.
In order to measure the effectiveness of this method, bees were positioned in a tunnel, and taught to anticipate a reward upon crossing a specific number of landmarks, no matter the distance they had to travel. They discovered that they were able to count up to four landmarks. Once they had learned to do this they were able to count landmarks, even if they were of a type they’d never encountered before.
Despite their small brain Honey bees are adept at recognizing human faces, or more precisely it is possible to distinguish pictures of people from one another. Even though they’re small, we shouldn’t be fooled by our flying companions!