Centipede EATS Its Way Out Viper's Stomach ....

Freedom was so close, yet so far for this centipede.

After being swallowed whole by a snake, it made one last desperate attempt to escape by eating its way out of her stomach. Researchers found the dead nose-horned female viper with its prey (see images) exploding from its side during a field study in Macedonia on May 14 last year. Both creatures were dead.

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What Is A Water Scorpion?

image credit  - joebartok.blogspot.com

Despite their name, water scorpions (family Nepidae–order Hemipetra) are not a type of scorpion at all. They are in fact, a type of bug. Scorpions have powerful pincers, and water scorpions are named after their large pincer-like forelegs that they use to catch prey in the water. Water scorpions also have long tails that stick out behind the body and look a bit like a scorpion's tail. Unlike a scorpion, the insect does not use its tail as a stinger. Instead, this “tail” made up of two attached respiratory tubes is extended above the surface of water, allowing the animal to take in air. A water scorpion hangs upside down with its “tail” poking out through the surface.

Found world-wide, water scorpions live mainly among the bottom edges of ditches and muddy ponds, where they hide among dead, water-logged leaves and other plant remains in order to catch prey.

One Of The Noisiest Insects In The Insect World

For having relatevly small bodies, Cicadas are one of the noisiest insects in the insect world. When many Cicadas are singing together the sound can be defeaning. Only male Cicadas produce clicking and chirping noices while performing mating calls that can be heard by females up to 1.6 kilimeters

(1 mile) away.

Male Cicadas produce their calls from the rapid vibration of the ribbed drumlike plates called tymbals located on either side of their abdomens (rear body section). Each tymbal is composed of stiff material and is shaped into a curve. When a muscle pulls on the tymbal, it pops into a curve that bends the other way. That movement makes a click. When the muscle relaxes, the tymbals return back to their original shape. The tymbals are clicked many rimes per second.

Did you Know?

In China, male Cicadas are kept in cages at pets. People like to listen to the insect's calls. Female Cicadas are not kept in cages because only male Cicadas sing.

Do Giant Horntail's Give You Nasty Stings?

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The Giant Horntail is a massive type of sawfly. Sawfles are relatives of Wasps, Bees and Ants. The Horntail and many other Sawflies are unmistakeable insects if seen (they have the familiar yellow and black colouring of stinging Wasps and Bees). However, Sawflies can look frightening because the females have a long 'sting' sticking out of their abdomens (rear sections). However this spike is not a stinger. Unlike some Wasps, Bees and Ants, Sawflies are incapable of stinging. Instead, the spike, known as an ovipositor, is a tube through which she lays her eggs. A Sawfly's ovipositor often resembles a saw-blade, which the Sawfly uses to drill holes deep into the wood. The eggs are laid in the wood, especially pine. The larvae live in the wood of pine trees, where they spend up to two years or possibly more developing.

Warning! Why Shouldn't You Touch A Tussock Moth Caterpillar?

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Tussock moth caterpillars have four brushes of hair on their backs. There are also long, black hairs on their heads. The hairs are a defense system. Touching the hairs can cause painful reactions if they come into contact with skin. The caterpillars have a gland that releases chemicals as a second line of defense. The hairs are left in the cocoon after the caterpillar has changed into an adult. Eggs are laid between the hairs for protection.

Did you Know?

The female rusty tussock moth has no wings. She attracts a mate with fragrance after she emerges from her cocoon. She then lays her eggs inside the empty cocoon. The eggs stay warm inside the cocoon all through winter before hatching in spring. 

Amazing Close-Up Macro Photograph

 A large ant (Camponotus herculaneus) 

 Amateur bug photographer John Hallmén has been fascinated by insects since he was a young boy. In the last three years John has made a name for himself by photographing the miniature creatures he finds in the Nackareservatet nature reserve close by his home in Stockholm, Sweden. Using a combination of studio and outdoor shots John magnifies the insects to show the stunning color and detail of his subjects. 

Picture: JOHN HALLMÉN / BARCROFT MEDIA
Source: www.telegraph.co.uk

Spiders That Throw Nets Over Their Prey

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The spiders that you see at home or in your garden catch flying insects in their webs. However, a few days ago as I was sifting through the Internet I came across a small group of spiders that use webs to capture insects on the ground. The colorfully named Orge-faced spiders spin a small casting web between the tips of their four front legs. They hang on a single thread from a branch so they are positioned just above the ground.

When an insect wanders under the motionless hunter, the spider plunges its stretched net-like web downwards to envelop and entangle its unwary passing by insect. If successful, the spider will then silk-wrap the insect, bite and paralyze it, and then feed on it. Net strikes will also be made at flying insects that wander too close. An unused net is now and then stored by hanging it on close by leaves for the following night's hunt, or the spider may possibly eat it. The Ogre-faced spiders are named after their large pair of protruding eyes situated at the front of the head, which let them see extremely well at night.

How Do Dragonflies See?

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Let me remind you not to sneak up on the Dragonfly because it escapes so fast that you would think the insect has eyes in the back of its head! 

Dragonflies are ferocious hunters that catch other insects in mid-air. To do this they need to be skillful flyers and to have excellent vision. A Dragonfly’s eyes allow it to see all around. An insects eye works in a different way to our own. Dragonflies have compound eyes – each an array of up to 28.500 smaller units. Each unit has its own lens and forms an image. The Dragonfly’s brain merges the many images into one composite picture of its surroundings. Compound eyes are especially good at picking up something that is moving. 

Did you know? 

Dragonflies are the closest thing the natural world has got to a helicopter. The insects do not simply flap their wings, but twist them back and forth to create a little vortex, or whirlwind, that lifts the insect.

Why Are Mole Crickets So Noisy?

image credit Qba From Poland

Mole crickets are burrowing insects. They dig through the soil with their shovel-like forelimbs that are highly developed for burrowing to find food, such as roots and insect grubs. Mole insects have shorter feelers than other crickets for the reason that there is no room for them in tight burrows. Mole crickets are one of the noisiest insects in the world. The male calls to attract mates. These calls can be heard hundreds of meters away – not bad at all for an insect that is about 3 to 5 centimeters long! The crickets rub their fore-wings together to make high pitched clicks. Their burrows make the calls louder as each burrow is carefully sculptured into the shape of a double exponential horn – which acts like a megaphone – sending the calls out into the air. 

Mole crickets are relatively common, but because they are nocturnal and spend nearly all their lives underground in extensive tunnel systems, they are rarely seen. However, in some places, mole cricket numbers are declining due to soil erosion and habitat destruction.

How Did The Deathwatch Beetle Get Its Name?

image credit wikimedia 

I must admit that very few insects have a name as interesting as the "deathwatch beetle". These little beetles are dangerous pest given that their larvae (young) eat wood. The larvae leave a network of tunnels inside that makes the wood very fragile. It is said that if the insects get into the timbers holding up a house, the beetles can actually make it fall down. 

The deathwatch beetles name comes from the way the beetles tap or tick out messages while feeding on wood. The noises are very quiet, and according to tradition they are heard when people wait in silence around the bed of a dying person. The beetle’s taps were thought to be the ticks of a clock counting down to the end of the person’s life …

What Is This - A Ant Or A Wasp?

image credit craig pemberton via wikipedia 

Despite their name, these are not ants – they’re wasps! The name velvet ant comes from the dense pile of short hair that covers the ant-like, wingless females; males have fully developed wings. Velvet ants come in a variety of colors, including blue, white, gold, silver, black, and red as shown in this subspecies. This type of coloration serves as a warning signal to potential predators. 

Velvet ants are known due to the female’s extremely painful sting, which is said to be strong enough to kill a cow – hence the name “cow killers”, though this isn’t actually true – it just really hurts a lot! 

Velvet ants use larvae of other wasps or bees as food for their larvae. Female’s bites open a suitable host cell and, if the larva in it is fully grown, lay their eggs on it and reseal the cell. The larva subsequently eats the host larva, and populate inside the cell.

Meet The World's Largest Insect

image credit wikipedia 

I recall seeing a Stick insect for the very first time in my life when I was a little girl, I was playing in my backyard. People used to tell me that these insects were actually very poisonous and I grew up believing so. However only recently did I discover quite a few interesting facts about these unique insects, and I also found out that they are not poisonous! 

With such long and narrow bodies, it is not surprising that Stick insects are known as one of the world’s longest insects. Apparently there are over 3.000 species of walking sticks which may range in shape and size from approximately 3 cm to 30 cm in length. Can you imagine an insect that is as long as your school ruler! 

Stick insects are expertly camouflaged by pretending to be pieces of wood. Some even have spikes on their bodies, so they look like twigs from the bushes. Most predators would have a tough time finding them amongst all the twigs. Should a predator grab hold of a Stick insect´s leg, it can make an easy escape by giving up a leg, using a special muscle to break it off at a weak joint. Juvenile Stick insects will regenerate the lost limb the next time they molt, and in some cases adult Stick insects are capable of forcing themselves to molt again to recover the missing limb. 

The Stick insect is a herbivorous animal - in other words its diet is purely vegetarian. It feeds on leaves and other green plants as well as odd berries or fruit. Stick insects are capable of reproducing parthenogenetically, without the need for males. A female may lay more than 1000 eggs (depending on the species), by dropping them randomly on the forest floor, sticking them to leaves or bark, or placing them in the soil. Her eggs are cleverly camouflaged to look like seeds and may remain dormant for a full season or more before hatching. The nymphs are born already closely resembling the adult stick insect.

How Did The Ladybird Get Its Name?

Ladybirds are very common beetles. In North America, the same beetles are known as Ladybugs. Most Ladybirds are predators. They eat other small insects such as aphids, mealy bugs and scale insects, which are serious pest of plants. That’s why the Ladybird can be the “GARDENER’S BEST FRIEND”.

In Europe, during the middle ages (long before the invention of chemical sprays that kill the pests), harmful insects were destroying the crops, so the Catholic farmers prayed to the Virgin Mary for help. Shortly the Ladybirds came to rescue and ate the plant-destroying insects and saved the crops. The European farmers gave thanks to Our Lady (the Virgin Mary) and named the beetle after her. The red wings symbolized the Virgin's cloak and the black spots symbolized her joys and sorrows. They didn't make a distinction between males and females.

Other interesting facts:

• There are hundreds of different kinds of ladybirds all over the world. They come in all different colors, too (red, orange, yellow, gray, brown, black and even pink).

• The spots on Ladybirds fade as they get older.

• Not all Ladybirds have spots.

• A Ladybird can lay up to 1000 eggs in its lifetime.

• Ladybirds will clean themselves after a meal.

• Many countries believe a Ladybird to be a sign of good luck.

Read more about Ladybirds at ladybuglady.com

The Unusual Thorn-bug ... Or Is It Actually A Thorn?

Thorn-bugs are a type of Tree-hoppers that have interested many people due to their unusual appearance. There is something like 3200 known species of Tree-hoppers spread in all continents, except Antarctica.

As you can see from the above image, these unique bugs have pointed covers (pronotum) over their bodies which resemble the shape of a thorn (that may grow on a rose bush) and apparently aid in perfect camouflage. In some of the other species the pronotum grows to a hornlike extension, even more out of the ordinary and hard to be explained forms can be found.

One cannot tell the difference between the male and female other than looking at the male genitalia. Tree-hoppers generally live for no more than a few months, but they do however belong to an ancestry that is no less than 40 million years old.

Source from wikipedia

Can You Tell The Difference Between A Moth And A Butterfly?

Butterfly or Moth (source of image)

Have you ever had this scenario where you see what you think is a butterfly, but you can’t be sure if it’s a butterfly though because sometimes moths can look a lot like butterflies? Complicated, isn’t it? However there are some general rules that can easily tell the two apart, so let’s have a look at them:

• The best way to identify a butterfly from a moth is to look at its antenna. Butterflies have a knob on the end of their feelers. Moths may have needle-like antennae with no knob, or they may be feather-like.

• Most butterflies rest with their wings together over their bodies whereas most moths rest with their wings outspread.

• Typically butterflies have brighter and gaudier colored wings and moths have more subtly to dull colored wings. (On the other hand, there are many exceptions to this rule, as many moths that fly during the day are brightly colored, and there are several types of butterflies that are darkish brown).

• Many moth pupae spin cocoons, whereas butterfly pupae have chrysalids or "silken shelters."

• Most moths have tiny hook or bristle hooking the fore-wings and hind wings together. Butterflies do not have this hook.

• Most butterflies fly during the day, and most moths fly during the night.

• Most Moths have a fat abdomen and furry bodies whereas most butterflies have slender, hairless bodies.

So, in general, to determine if what you are seeing is a moth or butterfly, first explore the antennae and then use the other defining characteristics to see if they fit … Now have a look at the above image and tell me what you see?

The most Dangerous Insect In The World

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Even though Killer Bees, Stinging Wasps, and Horse Flies might give extremely painful stings and bites, Mosquitoes are by far the most dangerous insects in the world. Mosquitoes are little flies and their name means just that in Portuguese and Spanish.

Typically both male and female Mosquitoes feed on plant juices and nectar from flowers. The female mosquito is solely responsible for biting - the females of most species need to obtain nutrients from a blood meal to make their eggs. They not only bite people, but also obtain blood from birds, reptiles, mammals or amphibians

Mosquitoes pierce the skin with a sharp, needle-like mouth and inject a little bit of saliva which serves as an anticoagulant. The saliva consists of tiny micro-organisms and viruses that cause diseases. Mosquito bites can spread many illnesses such as Malaria, Yellow Fever, and West Nile Virus. Some scientists estimate that Malaria alone affects between 500 and 700 million people each year, making it one of the world’s most dangerous diseases.

Do you know?

• In most species Mosquitoes lay their eggs in standing water; some lay eggs near the water's edges; others attach their eggs to aquatic plants.

• The eggs hatch into babies called Larvae - these look like little tiny caterpillars.

• The Larvae breath through a trumpet-shaped tube at the end of the body.