Incredible Insects I wonder how many people have seen the experiment scientists did with a Praying Mantis? When I first saw it, I have to confess it looked stupid. The scientists made tiny glasses and glued them on the Mantis. One lens was green and the other was blue. It turned out to be a valid experiment, because a Praying Mantis has forward facing eyes, but they don’t work the same as ours. A dot was projected and the Mantis attacked it as it moved in one direction. Then the dot was moved in such a way a human couldn’t follow it, but the Mantis could. This showed the researches not only did the Mantis have 3D vision, but its eyes worked different than ours, so a new type of vision was discovered. Mantis eyes are based on motion rather than a direct comparison which is the way human eyes work. What is incredible is humans are equipped with 85 billion neurons, but a Mantis has less than a million and yet they still have 3D vision. Ants are amazing creatures. They do their own farming and cultivate and grow mushrooms. They will sacrifice themselves for the welfare of their queen and colony. If we were to add up the weight of all the ants in the world it would equal or surpass the weight of all the humans in the world. If we were as strong as an ant, we could lift more than 30 times our own weight and some ants under certain circumstances can support a hundred times. An ant has an incredible lifespan for an insect. It is over 30 years. In one square mile of dirt filled with ants, they will move about 50 tons of soil in a year. One fact which seems strange to us is the fact worker ants and soldier ants are all females. Some ants are able to clone themselves. When you think of an insect in the water you think of a drowning insect, but some ants have the ability to swim and can live underwater for up to 24 hours. Ants sleep a lot. We have discovered some ants can produce antibiotics. Ants much like humans get infections. We are currently studying their antibiotic production to see if we can find it useful in our production of the drugs. Some insects have truly amazing powers. What most of us don’t know is the common Cockroach is being used by scientists in experiments to see if they can help to cure some of our worst diseases. Why were Cockroaches picked for this study? Scientists have found the brains of Cockroaches contain nine antibiotic molecules. These molecules protect them from voracious, lethal bacteria. The molecules are more powerful than the current crop of antibiotics we are using today. It turns out the properties of their antibiotics are so much more efficient than what we are using there is no comparison between them. Cockroaches can also survive a nuclear explosion. No wonder they are so hard to get rid of. This is a limit to this ability however. If they get exposed to more than 100,000 Rads they will die. Everyone seems to like fireflies. Children are fascinated by them and many of us have captured them when we were young and put them it a jar to watch them light up at night. Science is interested in the firefly. This interest comes from the fact when they light up they don’t waste much heat energy. Fireflies use all of their energy to produce light, nothing is wasted. Treehugger states 56 percent of all energy produced in the U.S. is wasted. A large amount of it is due to heat waste and inefficient technology. Our lighting has improved with some LED bulbs using 75 percent less energy than incandescent lighting. Fireflies have an ability similar to bees in that they can communicate with each other by flashing their lights in distinct patterns. If a female firefly is interested in mating with a male she will answer his flash with one of her own. Scientists believed humans and primates were the only ones with the ability to focus their attention on something. This belief was shattered when it was discovered certain flying insects also have this ability. They can concentrate on a target for example and not let themselves be distracted. They are doing this even though they have tiny brains. One of these creatures is the Dragonfly. An example was given which stated when a Dragonfly sees a group of tiny insects, it can focus on the one it wants to eat and not get distracted by the rest of the bugs. Scientists probably suspected this when they found out Dragonflies catch their prey 97 percent of the time. Nature has produced some strange abilities in insects which really make us wonder how this could have happened. An example of this is an insect which shouldn’t be able to do what it does. It is called the Bombardier beetle. When this creature is attacked it shoots out a stream of 212-degree fluid at its enemies to injure them. The fluid is also toxic. Even more incredible is the fact the fluid is composed of hydrogen peroxide and hydroquinone. This is incredible, because if this fluid ever combined inside the Bombardier beetle it would blow up. The beetle’s body is designed in such a way the two chemicals are kept separate and only mixed in a special chamber when it feels threatened, at which point it is squirted out. If we had some of the abilities insects have we could become super humans. Does it make you wonder why so many varieties of life have so many different abilities? Scientists seem to be very interested in the insect kingdom, because they know if they could apply some of their abilities to us, it could revolutionize our lives. Maybe we could become germ proof, or get a lot stronger. There is just so many abilities we could acquire. Perhaps the insects are the key to an improved life for humans. Maybe there is a mystery on this planet and the answer is studying everything around us which are fish, animals, insects and bacteria to find the answer to a better life. |
