bug
dr. dolittle | March 20, 2017A new study shows that globally, spiders consume 400-800 million tons of prey each year. That's roughly more than double the amount of fish and meat that humans consume. Impressive...yet creepy at the same time. I suppose we should thank them for their pest control efforts.
Sources:
M Nyffeler, K Birkhofer. An estimated 400–800 million tons of prey are annually killed by the global spider community. The Science of Nature. 104: 30, 2017. doi:10.1007/s00114-017-1440-1
News Beat video from YouTube
dr. dolittle | October 15, 2014I have. So I surfed the web and found this neat video from Smithsonian that explains it all.
dr. dolittle | February 13, 2014 Crazy ant image by Joe A. MacGown with the Mississippi Entomological Museum
Tawny (or Raspberry) crazy ants (Nylanderia fulva) are an invasive ant species from South America that have been invading the United States. For some reason, the ants are attracted to electronics and have been responsible for the destruction of numerous electronic devices.
A new study shows that tawny crazy ants rub formic acid over their bodies as a shield against fire ant venom. This conclusion came after researchers observed the ants rubbing themselves with formic acid after a confrontation with fire ants (…
aardvarchaeology | October 29, 2013Linux is a common operating system, not least in its Android version, and it is universally assumed that a PC (or whatever "IBM compatible" is called these days) will be able to run it. In fact, machines that can’t run Linux are extremely rare since aficionados keep porting the open-source operating system to even the most obscure and outdated machine families.
One of the PC makers who sell Linux compatible computers is Samsung. That is, almost all of their machines can run Linux, and when it was discovered last January that some recent laptops cannot, it was universally seen as a bug. Nobody…
bleimanb | September 3, 2008A paper by the University of Basel's Zoological Institute to be published in the upcoming issue of the journal, Animal Behavior, reveals the complex relationship that baby bugs - nymphs and larvae - have with their parents.
When young tree hoppers feel threatened they will shake the leaves and stems that they reside on, signaling their mothers to sit on top of them and chase away any attackers. Burying beetles and earwigs kick their mothers in the face until they regurgitate delicious filth into their babies' open mouths. Even Vespidae wasp larvae, which grow up in cells, will scratch at the…
zooillogix | June 4, 2008When Benny and I were little, we used to bait a large Havahart trap and leave it in the backyard overnight. We caught squirrels, possums and raccoons. Half the fun was the surprise of what might be inside when we woke up the next day. The game ended the morning we discovered we had caught a skunk... The Solar Insect Theater is kind of the same idea, just with less risk of skunk capture and extraction.
Basically it's a wooden bug box with a solar powered light that charges during the day and lures insects at night. The insects "can leave anytime they want" although most naturally choose to…