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Home > News > Tags > insects
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A protein called resilin allows fleas to jump very high, grasshoppers to leap over large distances, and cicadas to communicate at frequencies close to radio wavelengths. Now, the same molecule may be used to improve existing therapies aimed at vocal cord disorders.
The protein's secret is its ability to maintai... |
25 April 2012
10:42 GMT |
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Most people don't associate fleas with dinosaurs, and don't think that the former may have harmed the latter too much. That is until they learn that most dinosaurs were feathered, and that the fleas were monstrous, about 10 times their modern size. Fossils of these large bugs were found in China. One female... |
1 March 2012
10:42 GMT |
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Rice University scientists discovered in a new study that plants begin their preparations for the day's battle with hungry insects even before the Sun comes up. They studied a case where the plants were getting ready to fend off hungry caterpillars.
Researches such as this are conducted in order to gain a bette... |
14 February 2012
04:28 GMT |
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According to scientists, more than 50 percent of all newly-found species are insects, which makes this class of living organisms the most unexplored on the planet. This is also highlighted in the latest issue of the International Institute for Species Exploration's (IISE) annual ‘State of Observed Species&... |
19 January 2012
18:01 GMT |
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There are many ways of celebrating wildlife and all the beauties Mother Nature has to offer, but a young man has definitely chosen one of the most peculiar ones to express his excitement.
Covering his face with stick bugs, looking like tree branches, was his original way of welcoming the opening of the Bugs Garden h... |
28 December 2011
08:36 GMT |
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Ladies, it may be worthwhile to have a hairy man by your side after all. A new study shows that men with more bodily hair are better at detecting bedbugs crawling on the conjugal bed than those who groom themselves excessively.
This was detected in controlled laboratory settings, where scientists put men with both ... |
14 December 2011
03:51 GMT |
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Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) investigators have determined in a new study that bees reach their peak performance when gathering nectar and pollinating planets if they come across nectar that is viscous and high in sugar contents.
The insects have the tendency to probe what the plant has to offer wi... |
12 October 2011
15:01 GMT |
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A group of German investigators announces the discovery of a new order of insects that appears to have been the progenitor of modern-day mayflies. However, the researchers also discovered significant differences between the two groups of creatures. Details of the new investigation were published in a special issue on... |
17 August 2011
10:35 GMT |
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A group of investigators has determined that honeybees may be the first invertebrate creatures to display signs of pessimism. This emotion was until now believed to be limited to more complex animals, but that turns out not to be the case. Discovering this benchmark cognitive trait in insects is a major breakthroug... |
18 June 2011
04:55 GMT |
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Researchers have just identified an insect that apparently regained its wings, after having evolved to shed them more than 200 million years ago. The extravagant headgear on small cicada-like bugs called treehoppers was established to be a pair of wing-like appendages, experts say.The new discovery is very interestin... |
6 May 2011
09:33 GMT |
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In spite of being constantly overlooked by any type of conservation or domestication programs, bats are critically important to agriculture, performing a service that would otherwise cost the US federal government an estimated $3 billion per year.These creatures provide a tremendously-efficient pest-control service, ... |
1 April 2011
04:36 GMT |
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Robotics experts at the Cornell University, in the United States, announce that they were recently able to create robotic ornithopters, using nothing by 3D printing technology. The devices are tiny, hovering, insect-like flying machines capable of altitude control.The most difficult aspect of creating an artificial h... |
24 March 2011
05:32 GMT |
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Longhorn crazy ants are a peculiar species of insects. They can mate with their siblings to produce viable offspring, but experience none of the effects of inbreeding that other species experience if they take the same approach to reproduction.It would also appear that this strategy is helping the ants establish a wo... |
2 February 2011
04:52 GMT |
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It took centuries before someone finally noticed that the apparently dull, transparent wings of insects are filled with a multitude of colors, visible to the naked eye.At some point we all admired the wings of a beetle or of a colorful butterfly, but when people see a simple fly, they never think of the color of its ... |
4 January 2011
09:26 GMT |
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Juvenile hormones are just like the hormones of teenagers – they help make the passage to adult life, except they play this important role in insects, like fruit flies, butterflies and mosquitoes.They are part of a group of insect isoprenoids, that transform the body structures of insects, as they molt from lar... |
28 December 2010
03:08 GMT |
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Research scientists from the Arizona State University traveled around the world, to the most isolate places on the planet, to determine what is it exactly that triggers the swarming behavior in locusts. The creatures can produce massive damages to crops and trees, and so figuring out how to stop them is essential for... |
10 November 2010
05:07 GMT |
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A group of biologists has recently demonstrated in real-life that the first dragonflies to roam the Earth some 300 million years ago were a lot larger than their counterparts are today.In a new series of experiments, the team emulated the environment on the planet, as it would have appeared all that time ago. They cr... |
3 November 2010
06:31 GMT |
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The Arizona State University is hosting the 2010 Ugly Bug Contest, for the third time in a row. The public can vote its favorite insect on features such as size, color, beauty, or straight-up ugliness “You’ve just entered another dimension – a dimension of insects, a micro dimension, where milkweed... |
29 October 2010
05:14 GMT |
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The ‘Traveling Salesman Problem’ is a mathematical puzzle on which researchers have been working for decades. In a new study, it was demonstrated that bumblebees resolve it every single day. The TSP is heavily used in theoretical compute science and in operations research, and is classified as a NP-hard p... |
25 October 2010
06:50 GMT |
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Cockroaches and similar insects may seem disgusting and disease-ridden to some people, but for scientists working in the field of robotics, they are the perfect source of inspiration. Most of the designs revolving around robotic locomotion are based on the way these creatures run. According to experts, millions of ye... |
8 June 2010
02:44 GMT |
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The debate as to how many species live on our planet has been ongoing for centuries, and scientists have thus far failed to come to an agreement on this issue. Most commonly, experts say that the number of creature types ranges in the tens of millions, but a new investigation by Australian researchers at the Universi... |
4 June 2010
10:58 GMT |
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Whenever people decide to settle in an area, they begin modifying the environment so that it best suits them. These urban developments cause massive damage to native species of fish and aquatic insects, a new investigation has uncovered. The researchers behind it say that the old idea, according to which the early st... |
4 June 2010
02:58 GMT |
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Scientists have been trying to obtain the perfect glare- and reflection-free displays for many years, but thus far their efforts have been in vain. Now, after turning to nature for inspiration, experts believe they may have just discovered a means of making these advanced devices a reality. They say that the only thi... |
26 May 2010
03:01 GMT |
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Over the past few years, biologists noted a very worrying trend in the evolution of carnivorous, or meat-eating plants. They learned that, overall, the total number and size of populations appeared to be decreasing, and sought to investigate possible reasons why. Recently, a team of scientists from the United Kingdom... |
14 April 2010
08:28 GMT |
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British researchers from the Imperial College London (ICL) have recently developed the first three-dimensional representation of one of the earliest ancestors of the modern cockroach. The 3D “visual fossil model” features an exquisite level of detail, and is published in the April 13 issue of the esteemed... |
14 April 2010
06:35 GMT |
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Just recently, an international collaboration of scientists and archaeologists conducted a new expedition in Ethiopia, during which they discovered a wide array of prehistoric lifeforms, all of them trapped in amber. The 20 members of the expedition discovered 30 different arthropods solidified in the deposits, all o... |
9 April 2010
10:03 GMT |
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There are several tales circulating around about how kids from small towns make it big in metropolises, through honesty, hard work and dedication. A new study shows that this may also be true for a particular ant species as well. Colonies of the odorous house ant (Tapinoma sessile) develop unexpectedly when placed in... |
1 April 2010
09:54 GMT |
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Scientists were finally able to identify the strongest insect in the world. Their “champion” is a species of dung beetle apparently able to pull on roughly 1,141 times its own body weight. Translated in humans, this means that a 70-kilogram individual could pull six full double-decker buses. This ability ... |
24 March 2010
03:25 GMT |
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Scientists have known for some time now that bees see the world about five times faster than humans do. However, details of this ability have been scarce, until recently. Researchers at the Queen Mary, University of London, in the United Kingdom, managed to infer that these insects have the fastest color vision in th... |
17 March 2010
11:18 GMT |
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In the Victorian epoch, a large number of aristocrats in the United Kingdom purchased Japanese knotweed from the Far East, in a bid to decorate their homes and gardens with more exotic plants. The plan soon backfired, as the knotweed soon moved out of gardens, and into the wild. Since then, they have been spreading a... |
9 March 2010
09:42 GMT |
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Evolutionary biologists have for a long time wondered how is it that nature allows for the development of social insects, such as termites and ants. Mega-colonies can have up to millions of members that do not mate, reproduce, or start new colonies, the soldiers and common workers. Given that nature usually selects f... |
30 January 2010
05:40 GMT |
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According to a new scientific investigation, it may be that insect colonies made up of a great number of individuals have the ability to behave in a unitary manner, similar to a superorganism. The conclusion is especially true in terms of basic physiology, researchers from the University of Florida, who have been beh... |
20 January 2010
03:43 GMT |
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Scientists at the Lund University have announced that a partnership they have with automotive manufacturer Toyota, for the development of a new type of night-vision devices, is about to pay off. The goal of the investigation was to draw inspiration from the mechanisms animals used to see in the dark, and then transla... |
8 January 2010
08:40 GMT |
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A new scientific study has revealed a very worrying fact about some 44 species of insects in Europe – they appear to be multiplying out of control. The area that has been housing them for thousands, if not millions, of years, has warmed considerably since the 1980s, and the creatures have adapted their life cyc... |
28 December 2009
05:44 GMT |
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Animals and insects living at the highest latitudes, either at the North or South Poles, had to be evolutionarily prepared to do so, biologists hypothesized a long time ago. They also proposed that these animals, especially the smaller ones, must have antifreeze molecules inside their bodies, to prevent the water ins... |
24 November 2009
14:01 GMT |
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Misumena vatiaspider is a species of spiders that, because of its mouthful of a name, is more widely known for its amazing trait. The females in this species are able to camouflage themselves perfectly, mimicking the color of whatever flower they happen to be lurking on, while waiting for some insect to drop by. In a... |
4 November 2009
11:12 GMT |
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Paleontologists have recently made an important discovery in the state of Myanmar, when they have come acorss the fossilized remains of a “unicorn fly.” The insect was, apparently, extremely well endowed for steering clear of predators. It featured a large, horn-like structure at the top of its head that ... |
28 October 2009
03:43 GMT |
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It would finally appear that some of the money channeled into the Pentagon has yielded conclusive results. A project the institution funded, and that was conducted by experts at the University of California in Berkeley (UCB), has managed to create the first cyborg flying insect, a machine of sorts that is half biolog... |
13 October 2009
08:41 GMT |
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Insects do not have a sense of smell per se, in the way we define it. They respond to chemicals in their environment like humans and higher mammals do, but are not equipped with a nose, nostrils, and smell receptors. Rather, a new study has revealed, they have specialized proteins that perform about the same role. Th... |
1 October 2009
14:11 GMT |
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One of the most arduous dreams that spies and secret agencies around the world have is to benefit from invisible observers in all possible situations. One way this can be done, and that, apparently, will become reality fairly soon, is through small, insect-like robots, outfitted with small-scale observation equipment... |
28 September 2009
19:01 GMT |
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Naturalists and biologists warn those suffering from arachnophobia that this autumn may be a thing of nightmares. On account of excellent breeding conditions and suitable climate, much more spiders and daddy longlegs (crane flies) will be spawned. Last autumn was very rainy, so crane-fly larvae had sufficient decayin... |
25 September 2009
17:31 GMT |
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Recent scientific studies conducted on insect flight have revealed that nature and evolution seem to favor a wing design that is not flat and inflexible, such as airplane wings. While they may get the job done transporting humans from point A to point B, they are not highly efficient in terms of performances, when co... |
18 September 2009
03:42 GMT |
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For quite some time now, researchers and naturalists have believed that insects fly best if they keep their wings rigid. This conclusion was brought forth by the fact that mechanics and aerodynamics of insect flight seemed to hint in that direction at first. But a new investigation has proven that it's, in fact... |
30 June 2009
09:58 GMT |
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University of Arizona researchers managed to demonstrate for the first time that even insects have the ability to self-medicate, as in to consume various compounds found in plants or other places, in order to rid themselves of infections, parasites, bacteria or other “health issues.” The experiments, cond... |
14 March 2009
06:53 GMT |
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A new book, authored by Jeffrey Lockwood, emphasizes the vulnerability that the United States currently has to foreign bioattacks, and highlights the importance of federal authorities devising an efficient way of counteracting the possible effects of such an attack, if it were to happen. Lockwood, who is a professor ... |
6 January 2009
04:26 GMT |
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The reason why this discovery is so huge is simply because it's the first of its kind. In other words, it's the first full-body impression of a prehistoric fly, dating as far back as 300 million years ago. According to paleontologists, the fossil belongs to the Carboniferous Period. Most amazing are the cir... |
17 October 2008
09:02 GMT |
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While the summertime brings us a lot of pleasures, especially in terms of weather, it also comes with a large variety of annoying insects, amongst which the mosquito, a never-ending source of discomfort and ultimately pain. Most of the time, a pesticide will do just fine in keeping these hungry bugs at a distance, al... |
8 July 2008
08:43 GMT |
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Exotic foods are all the rage these days, with people looking to bring a little adventure into their culinary worlds via a series of spices and herbs that don't exactly grow in our back gardens. Our tendency towards the new, the fashionable and the exotic is also reflected in the unusual (sometimes downright ala... |
2 June 2008
03:45 GMT |
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You've probably never thought that termites or other insects can be detected by a robot. But Australian based Termicam found a way to make this scenario possible. The company searched for other methods than tapping walls with objects or even breaking the walls when it comes to destroying insects. Thermal imaging... |
9 May 2007
02:57 GMT |
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