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The dragonfly is the aerial stunt of the insect world. Dragonflies were amongst the first insects to fly, about 300 Ma ago. 290 Ma ago, the dragonflies had a wingspan of 68 cm (2.3 ft). They can fly fast, up to 60 km (37 mi) per hour, which is an amazing feat for an insect, but also slowly, backwards (the hummingbird... |
15 May 2008
06:01 GMT |
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These insects are better known for their specific hunting technique, for using their forelegs in order to maintain a "praying" posture in the stalk and for the cannibalistic habits of the female during mating. The praying mantises are known to be related to cockroaches, stick insects and termites. A new 87-million-ye... |
30 April 2008
02:44 GMT |
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This behavior is better known by most people as "playing possum" and by scientists as thanatosis ("putting to death" in Greek). When threatened or harmed, some animals mimic the appearance and smell of a sick or dead animal. The behavior is mostly known in opossums, but in reality it is practiced by various animals, ... |
15 April 2008
02:40 GMT |
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Many aliens in the SF movies are inspired from insects; or perhaps vertebrates represent strange aliens for them. A new study to be published in "Nature" by a team of researchers from Rockefeller University and the University of Tokyo adds another proof of the fact that insects have evolved very differently from othe... |
14 April 2008
04:49 GMT |
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This new finding has come like a shock: the world's most primitive multicellular animals still living are not the sponges, but a more complex animal. The research carried out at the National Science Foundation (NSF) and published in the journal "Nature" revealed that the comb jellyfish, which has tissues and a n... |
11 April 2008
04:36 GMT |
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They are associated with the dark and with the myth of vampires (even if only 3 tropical American species consume blood, out of about 1,100 species). In fact, we know that most bats appreciate insects more than other foods. And two new researches published in the Science journal show us why bats control the annoyance... |
7 April 2008
02:54 GMT |
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Some males are 'dying' to have sex…literally! In praying mantises, soon after mating or during mating, the female starts devouring its partner, head first! Many spider males are in the same peril, so, in order not to fall victims to their sweeties, they deliver a large fly to their partners, which will keep... |
5 April 2008
05:10 GMT |
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A humble grass eating Mexican beetle turned in less than one century in one of the a world's worst agricultural pests. The Colorado potato beetle (Leptinotarsa decemlineata) is less than 2 cm (0.8 in) long and has 10 back black stripes. For centuries, it fed just on spiny plants and thorns. It could not attack p... |
31 March 2008
09:11 GMT |
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Have you ever wondered which is the world's smallest feathered creature? It is, of course, a species of hummingbird. The Bee Hummingbird (Mellisuga helenae) inhabits Cuba (where people call it zunzuncito) and the Isle of Youth. The bird weighs 1.8 grams, having a length of about 5 cm (2 in). An unaware observer ... |
26 March 2008
10:26 GMT |
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It is impossible to be fooled when seeing these insects. Butterflies and moths make the Order Lepidoptera. These insects would fly around during the dinosaur era, 140 Ma ago. First were the moths, butterflies appearing much later. The oldest known butterfly fossil is 40 Ma old: Prodryas persephone, discovered at Lake... |
21 March 2008
17:56 GMT |
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There are bats whose diet relies on nectar. To feed on it, the bats have to hover like a bumblebee in front of the flower, while they extract the sweet juice with their long tongue. But current aerodynamic theories say bats are too large for this, but still do it. A new research published in the journal "Science" and... |
29 February 2008
02:49 GMT |
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Only three groups of animals really fly today: insects, birds and bats. Flight requires the use of organs called wings, but their structure and functioning differ enormously from one group to another. Anyhow, all flying animals are heavier than the air and only the wings movement and the use of air currents keep them... |
27 February 2008
09:37 GMT |
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Shrews have always been considered an ancestral model of mammals, the model of how primitive mammals must have looked during the dinosaur era. But a new research made on water shrews and published in the "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences" reveals highly sophisticated methods for hunting underwater smal... |
20 February 2008
04:04 GMT |
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Geckos are really some of the most amazing lizards. They are mostly known for their ability to climb vertical walls and walk on ceilings using their adhesive toes. The secret behind this amazing ability lies in an unique quick-release mechanism that permits geckos to strongly adhere to a surface, but then detach with... |
18 February 2008
03:39 GMT |
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This is the elephant of all shrews. Africans call them sengi, Europeans call them elephant shrews because they resemble giant shrews with long trunk-like flexible snouts. Surprisingly, they were right in a proportion of 50%: DNA has revealed that they are indeed related to elephants, and not to actual shrews, which a... |
1 February 2008
02:49 GMT |
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These are the most impressive carnivorous plants, having spectacular traps: pitcher plants (Nepenthes), growing in various places, from Madagascar and southeastern Asia to northeastern Australia. The 117 species are also dubbed "Monkey cups" as monkeys have been spotted drinking rainwater from them. These plants are ... |
29 January 2008
05:07 GMT |
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1.There are about 900,000 described species of insects, forming 80% of the described animal species, and scientists evaluate their actual number to be somewhere between 2 to 10 million species, including unknown species. Calculating the total number of insects on the globe, researchers found it overpassed by 200 bill... |
22 January 2008
16:56 GMT |
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Taste is more than chemical and connected to proper flavor. It implies signals of temperature and touch - what we call "mouth feeling" - and this is extremely important in the case of ice cream.A smooth high quality ice cream has tiny ice crystals, around 15 to 20 microns wide. But temperature variation, like when br... |
16 January 2008
05:47 GMT |
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We talk about asteroid impacts or massive volcanic eruptions, but in fact the largest beasts that roamed the Earth could have been wiped out by one of the tiniest: insects. More precisely, biting, disease-carrying insects. And this proof could emerge from amber."There are serious problems with the sudden impact theor... |
4 January 2008
04:12 GMT |
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The entomophagy or insect eating is considered disgusting in western societies, even if the Europeans eat all kinds of crustaceans and mollusks. But in the diet of our ancestors, they could have had an important place, judging from the diet of the chimpanzees. Other cultures do not reject insects at all, as they are ... |
20 December 2007
14:06 GMT |
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1.There's nothing more disgusting among the insects than cockroaches. Of the world's 4,000 species, only 30 species live in our household. The house infesting species vary from the 3 cm (1.2 in) long American cockroach, Periplaneta americana (really nasty seeing it around the house), to the 1.5 cm (0.6 in)... |
19 December 2007
06:47 GMT |
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1.These insects are famous for their catastrophic invasions, mentioned even in the Bible as the eighth plague. Locusts are divided in about 10,000 species grouped in 10 families. All plague locusts belong to the family Acrididae.The biblical locust was the Desert Locust (Schistocerca gregaria), which has been threat... |
14 December 2007
11:15 GMT |
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Spiders are not insects, as most of us think so, and we try to imitate their silk, which has amazing properties. It is five times more powerful than steel and extremely elastic, stretching by 30% more than nylon (2-4 times before breaking off). Still, it does not vibrate like an elastic web for circus jumps, as it wo... |
8 December 2007
08:29 GMT |
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There's no Voodoo or tetrodoxin neurotoxin from pufferfish involved in this case. And these Zombies will surely die eaten alive. In a new research published in the "Journal of Experimental Biology", Israeli researchers have found how the parasitic jewel wasp manages, through a venom injected directly into a cock... |
7 December 2007
03:08 GMT |
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We usually detest insects, but this one is amongst our favorites. Ladybirds are beautiful, but for reputed gardeners they are also very useful. Why? Because their food is made almost entirely of plant lice, small soft bodied insects that invade garden plants and crops. Ladybirds eat plant lice both as adult and larva... |
6 December 2007
07:09 GMT |
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Biologists thought for long that only vertebrates have complex adaptive immune systems that allow them to fight against many germs after just one infection. But the concept has changed in the last years, as many insects too have been found to have an immune memory that defends them against reinvasion by a microbe the... |
4 December 2007
14:06 GMT |
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The spring, when nature blooms, pollen is everywhere in the air. It is the curse for the allergic people, experiencing the "hay fever". But what's the pollen? The product of the male part of the flowers (stamins), in other words, plant sperm. For a plant to reproduce, the pollen must reach the pistil on the fema... |
27 November 2007
11:00 GMT |
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There are spiders with an innate artistic sense. This is the case of the Argiope spiders, which have beautifully adorned webs with zigzag and spiral patterns. And the artwork is effective: insects are attracted by the fancy webs, but predators, too, as signaled by a new research published in Behavioral Ecology. The m... |
22 November 2007
03:27 GMT |
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These are the most amazing carnivorous plants: the 117 pitcher plant species of the genus Nepenthes, found from Madagascar and southeastern Asia to northeastern Australia. They possess the most spectacular traps, even if considered amongst the least sophisticated functionally, till the publication of a new research i... |
21 November 2007
06:07 GMT |
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During a safari in the African, Australian or South American savannas you will come across some strange constructions resembling the towers of a castle. Their architects and builders are the termites, insects of the Isoptera order. They are also called "white ants", but have nothing to do with the real ants (which ar... |
17 November 2007
14:03 GMT |
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You cannot get rid of cockroaches that easily and they are so hardy that they are amongst the few organisms that can survive in an area after atomic experiments. The disgusting insects also surprise us with a memory that makes them capable of advanced learning. But a new toy can change their behavior. Cockroaches alw... |
16 November 2007
05:00 GMT |
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Mammals and birds may be the most complex organisms, but insects have won the evolution race. There are about 900,000 described species, and scientists evaluate their real number from 2 to 10 million species. Calculating the total number of insects on the globe, researchers found it overpasses by 200 billion times th... |
15 November 2007
16:09 GMT |
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Butterflies are renowned usually for their beauty. But amongst the 750 species of butterfly encountered in US and Canada, this is the most known worldwide, due to its amazing migration records. The black and orange beauty bears the name of monarch butterfly because the first English settlers of America associated it ... |
14 November 2007
14:11 GMT |
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We are damping in the environment tonnes of poison (read pesticides) that finally accumulate in the water, soil and air, envenoming us directly through food, drunk water and breathed air, not to mention that all the species suffer. The ecological agriculture tries to eliminate these poisons and one way to keep off pe... |
14 November 2007
03:43 GMT |
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1. The oldest known bee was found in amber coming from Myanmar: 100 million years old! This was during the Cretaceous, the last dinosaur era, and Melittosphex shared both bee and wasp traits. The honey bees (genus Apis) originated in southern Asia and only one species, Apis melifera, is found also in Europe and Afric... |
10 November 2007
08:38 GMT |
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Nature is well ahead man in what concerns the best technological patterns. That's why researchers are mimicking natural models to improve technologies. Inspired by the microstructures of beetle feet, a team from the Max Planck Institute (MPI) in Stuttgart, Germany, and Case Western Reserve in Cleveland, US, has ... |
6 November 2007
03:02 GMT |
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Since antiquity, people have built statues to the animals. This was done for various religious or cultural reasons. For example, the animal could have represented the image of a god or was linked to local myths and legends, like the famous Roman statue of the she-wolf feeding Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome. ... |
27 October 2007
05:17 GMT |
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An ant colony contains one or several fertile females called queens, which lay eggs and sterile workers, which are also females. In northern areas, during spring, from a few eggs in 35-45 days sexual flying individuals are formed, males and females. The flying individuals go out on a warm wet day. They mate, but only... |
25 October 2007
15:11 GMT |
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In fairy tales, the characters turn into flies and get everywhere they want, listening to what's cooking behind any door. Now, when you say 'there are bugs in this room', you automatically send a message with double meaning, one of which is related to the new-generation devices. Lately, increasingly mo... |
18 October 2007
13:06 GMT |
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Cycad palms are some of the oldest trees on Earth. Even if they resemble a palm tree, they are much more primitive, being gymnosperm related to the coniferous trees. They appeared 280 millions year ago, when reptiles were just evolving from amphibians, and dominated the Earth for a long time during the dinosaur era t... |
5 October 2007
07:12 GMT |
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They are an annoyance that can ruin our pleasantest trip. But in rural areas, with so many domestic and wild animals around, the insects' proliferation is unavoidable, and with them come their bites. That's why people have looked for many natural remedies to alleviate them. To relieve rapidly the uneasiness... |
28 September 2007
16:31 GMT |
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Mustard gas may have killed thousands of soldiers, but the trick was already used in nature even before humans and moreover, it seems that it has been so for at least 100 million years.Researchers at Oregon State University have presented a soldier beetle, preserved almost perfectly in amber, while employing chemical... |
10 September 2007
06:34 GMT |
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Bacteria are the smallest cell organisms. Only viruses are smaller than a bacterium. Bacteria are about 10 times smaller than eukaryotic cells (cells having a nucleus, like plants and animals) and are typically 0.5-5.0 micrometers long. (a micrometer is one thousandth of a millimeter).Thats' why we need a micros... |
11 August 2007
10:02 GMT |
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The "green revolution" of the agriculture threw enormous quantities of poison (read "pesticides") on the cultivated fields.Many still persist (especially those with chlorine) and huge amounts are still used to ensure the harvest.A solution to reduce contamination would be the use of the bacteria against insect pests.... |
30 May 2007
10:38 GMT |
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Researchers have found 50 new species of insects in Thailand, and we're not talking about minute creatures here, but about large water bugs that can even eat small fish and induce painful bites on curious humans.The team led by Robert Sites at University of Missouri, Columbia, has described 12 of the 50 new spec... |
22 May 2007
08:38 GMT |
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It seems simple in case of insects: oxygen goes directly to the cells without the need of blood. But powerful X-ray technology that peers through the opaque beetles' cover has revealed a much higher complexity of their breathing apparatus. A recent investigation shows that insect respiration is more than a pass... |
18 May 2007
09:13 GMT |
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Conventional insect traps may present health risks, besides the fact that they make noise or smell bad. Old bug catchers usually blow bugs into thousands of tiny pieces potentially containing colonies of bacteria that could spread inside the room and possibly infect human residents. They also can blow up particles c... |
10 May 2007
11:54 GMT |
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Insects have muscles that can execute one of the fastest movements: wings moved at an astonishing frequency of 1,000 Hz is one example. This means that they need quick access to oxygen for such fast burning. New imaging technologies could solve a physiological paradox in this equation: how their respiratory system, ... |
30 April 2007
05:04 GMT |
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When you can, you flee out from the winter cold to some more welcoming places like Hawaii and Caribbean. Birds do it, some bats, mammals, and insects go to warmer zones during the winter. Many mammals hibernate, but what about the many cold-blooded animals, like arthropods (insects, spiders and crustaceans) or frogs?... |
4 April 2007
08:20 GMT |
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Nematode worms are tinny but they can infect and kill insect pests using a toxin synthesized by a bacteria from their guts on the dead body of the insect. After that, the worms feed on the dead insects. A team at the University of Warwick has found how the toxic protein behaves like a cunningly designed poison pill b... |
12 March 2007
12:47 GMT |
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