Incredible Insects When one thinks of incredible animals they usually do not think about insects. That is their loss, because some insects do things which are spectacular when we think about the tiny brains they have. Another thing we usually do not think about, is the fact some of them are edible. Yes, I know this thought is repulsive to many of us in the western world, but in some places eating insects is common place, and scientists have often said this could help everyone in the world get enough food. One only has to look to the bible to see references to eating locusts. Ants are amazing creatures. They are accomplished farmers and grow mushrooms and raise other creatures like aphids, much as we raise cows. One thing an ant can do which is hardly ever mentioned, is find its way home no matter how far it wandered off, and they don’t seem to need landmarks to do this. So how do they do this? They use their unusual sense of smell, and record an odor map which can lead them back home. There are over ten thousand known species of ants. Ants are extremely strong for their size and can carry between ten to fifty times their weight. If we could do this a two hundred pound man could carry ten thousand pounds. There are about one million ants for every human. Some ants can clone themselves. Some ants can swim. Dragonflies are unusual creatures. The first thing which makes them unusual is they gather in swarms even though many are from different species. Science believes these creatures were one of the first flying insects to evolve. There are over five thousand species of dragonflies, and in millions of years they got smaller. It is believed they were huge in the Paleozoic era. The dragonfly is a fantastic flyer, it can even hover. They need to fly, because that is the only time they can eat. The dragon fly is one of the most accomplished hunters in the world with tests showing they catch between ninety to ninety-five percent of the prey they go after. Dragonflies can see in every angle except behind them. One dragonfly can eat between thirty to hundreds of mosquitoes per day. Some dragonflies can travel one hundred miles in a day. One dragonfly, the globe skinner, travels eleven thousand miles on its migration. I just have to talk about bees, because they are so amazing. Did you ever wonder why a bee makes a buzzing noise? It is because its wings are beating over two hundred beats per second. We tend to think that bees produce a lot of honey in their lifetime, but surprisingly one worker bee only produces about 1/12 of a teaspoon in a lifetime. There is no other insect which can produce food we eat. Honey is a great food, but why? It is great, because it includes everything we need for life and contains pinocembrin an antioxidant which gives us an improved brain function. Being a male bee, or drone can be brutal. When the winter comes, and the hive goes into survival mode the drones are kicked out. Bees produce two to three times more honey than they need to survive. If the queen dies the workers create a new one by taking a young larva and feeding it royal jelly. Bees have a superior sense of smell, but they don’t live very long. The average worker bee has a life span of only five to six weeks. The queen can live for up to five years. It is amazing in this short lifetime bees can communicate with each other to let the hive know where the tasty flowers they found are located. Throughout history one insect which has been feared is the locust. Individually they have been eaten, or not had much attention paid to them, but when they swarm they destroy every plant in the area. A swarm of locust can fly thousands of miles destroying every plant on their route. In 1954 one swarm flew from northwest Africa to Great Britain. To give you an idea of how much a swarm of locusts can eat, it can eat up to four hundred million pounds of plants a day. There have even been times when a swarm of locusts has gotten into a house and eaten the furniture. Contrary to what some people think, a flea cannot fly. They can jump about eight inches, which for their size would be like us jumping about one hundred fifty times our height or about nine hundred feet for a six-foot man. Fleas have been with us for about one hundred million years. Females are usually bigger than males in any flea species, of which there are about two thousand known. If you live in the United States and have fleas they are probably the type known as the cat flea which likes to live on cats, dogs and humans. A female flea can consume fifteen times its body weight in blood daily. Flea eggs are usually laid on the host and fall off spreading them. Until a flea eats its first blood it cannot lay eggs. A flea has a lifespan of between two to three months. The insect which is the most internationally reviled is the cockroach. Just the sight of them are disgusting to most of us. However, the cockroach is an incredible creature. It can hold its breath for over forty minutes. It is very fast for its size and can run up to three miles in an hour. A cockroach spends over seventy five percent of its time resting. It can resist cold temperatures down to thirty-two degrees Fahrenheit. If you cut the head off of a cockroach it can still live up to a week. After it loses its head the only reason it eventually dies is it can no longer drink water. It can still breathe through the holes in its body. When a tiny cockroach is born and is only one day old it can run as fast as a full grown one. The German cockroach, which is throughout the United States, loves beer. The biggest species of cockroach lives in South America, and is six inches long with a wingspan of a foot. Cockroaches can live without food for a month, but only one week without water. The spiny flower mantis is a type of praying mantis which resembles a flower, and it takes advantage of that fact for camouflage. They snatch their prey from the air. Nature protects newborn spiny flower mantises by making newborns shiny black in color to resemble ants which gives them some protection against predators. When threatened the mantises make themselves look bigger by raising their forewings. Mantises are also cannibals. If you are going to keep a female as a pet, it is recommended before you put a male in with her, feed her first. If we could have some of the abilities which insects have, we would become supermen and superwomen.
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