Hey, Fedi.
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Hey, Fedi. I have a favour to ask you. Help me help a friend. (Not financial!)
I have a friend who is all about cool bug facts. They're going through an intense patch in their life, so I would like to send them some bug facts to cheer them up. But this is really their thing, so basic search engine results aren't going to new to them.
If there's a cool bug fact that you genuinely love, could you tell me? I'll save them to share with my friend over time. 1/n
there is the gall wasp, a parasite of oak trees
it manipulates the oak to make galls, growths that its larvae eat and grow in
but there is a parasite, of this parasite
tiny and trippy looking
its larvae consume the gall wasp larvae, and when it is ready to leave, it convinces its host to chew almost out of the gall, just the tip of its head exposed, then the parasite of the parasite chews through the head, and emerges
the crypt-keeper wasp
ghoulish
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@stevegis_ssg @ShaulaEvans Something I've wondered for ages now is why do only certain insects buzz? Housefly's can be annoyingly loud whereas butterflies don't make a sound.
@KaraLG84 @stevegis_ssg @ShaulaEvans Butterflies do very softly make a sound in a quiet enough butterfly house.
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@ShaulaEvans Beds are filled with mites that feed off of dead skin cells. This prevents harmful mold to grow and means there is no hygienic reason to wash your bed. Unless you're allergic to dust mites that is.
@Pixdigit I am in fact allergic to dust mites! But I've been experimenting with vacuuming my bed to extend the use life of bedding.
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@ShaulaEvans how about these:
- domestic honeybees have specialized roles at the hive entrance, easiest to see with a slow motion camera. The entrance operates a bit like an airport. There's a bee who frisks incoming bees to confirm that they belong, a bee who sniffs incoming bees like one of those drug dogs to verify pheramone signature, an air traffic control bee who watches inbound and outbound bees, a security bee who leaps into action upon signal from the other bees to kick out intruders and imposters.
- bees have also been shown in studies to possibly be able to: do math, recognize faces, experience ptsd, and play
- the spongy moth was introduced to the US by a guy who was hoping to corner a new silk market, but he lost control of the caterpillars and they became an extremely invasive species there, oops
- not bugs obviously but they might still find this cool: spiders have been found to communicate with each other via drumming
@growfediverse @ShaulaEvans Wow, I had forgotten those bee facts
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Hey, Fedi. I have a favour to ask you. Help me help a friend. (Not financial!)
I have a friend who is all about cool bug facts. They're going through an intense patch in their life, so I would like to send them some bug facts to cheer them up. But this is really their thing, so basic search engine results aren't going to new to them.
If there's a cool bug fact that you genuinely love, could you tell me? I'll save them to share with my friend over time. 1/n
@ShaulaEvans There's a moth in the UK where the female is just a fat fuzzy thing with no wings that waits for the male.
https://butterfly-conservation.org/moths/belted-beauty -
there is the gall wasp, a parasite of oak trees
it manipulates the oak to make galls, growths that its larvae eat and grow in
but there is a parasite, of this parasite
tiny and trippy looking
its larvae consume the gall wasp larvae, and when it is ready to leave, it convinces its host to chew almost out of the gall, just the tip of its head exposed, then the parasite of the parasite chews through the head, and emerges
the crypt-keeper wasp
ghoulish
ps:
the latin nomenclature for the crypt-keeper wasp is "Euderus Set"
The ancient Egyptian god Set trapped his brother Osiris in a coffin, then killed him and chopped him up into pieces
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Hey, Fedi. I have a favour to ask you. Help me help a friend. (Not financial!)
I have a friend who is all about cool bug facts. They're going through an intense patch in their life, so I would like to send them some bug facts to cheer them up. But this is really their thing, so basic search engine results aren't going to new to them.
If there's a cool bug fact that you genuinely love, could you tell me? I'll save them to share with my friend over time. 1/n
@ShaulaEvans I don't know if stick insects are Officially Bugs or not, but there's a species in Papua New Guinea which sprays when agitated, and the locals use it as an Antibacterial Spray Insect.
Other interesting stick insect facts here: https://deborah.makarios.nz/2019/10/29/the-weird-and-wonderful-stick-insect/
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@ShaulaEvans There's a moth in the UK where the female is just a fat fuzzy thing with no wings that waits for the male.
https://butterfly-conservation.org/moths/belted-beauty@ShaulaEvans There is a kind of moth that can feed on human blood like a mosquito https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calyptra_(moth)
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Hey, Fedi. I have a favour to ask you. Help me help a friend. (Not financial!)
I have a friend who is all about cool bug facts. They're going through an intense patch in their life, so I would like to send them some bug facts to cheer them up. But this is really their thing, so basic search engine results aren't going to new to them.
If there's a cool bug fact that you genuinely love, could you tell me? I'll save them to share with my friend over time. 1/n
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@KaraLG84 @stevegis_ssg @ShaulaEvans Butterflies do very softly make a sound in a quiet enough butterfly house.
@Akki @stevegis_ssg @ShaulaEvans Oh they do don't they now you mention it. I remember holding one near my ear when I was little.
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… and then the very tips are formed from little membrane sacs inside the cells (the technical term is "vesicles") that line up and fuse together to make incredibly fine tubes that fill with air. Oxygen-starved tissues send out a signal that nearby tracheal cells respond to by growing more of these tube-tips in their direction.
@stevegis_ssg @ShaulaEvans I had always wondered about how insects breathe. Thank you for this enlightening explanation.
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@Akki @stevegis_ssg @ShaulaEvans Oh they do don't they now you mention it. I remember holding one near my ear when I was little.
@KaraLG84 @stevegis_ssg @ShaulaEvans They're quieter because everything wants to eat them, I think. Also the size-shape-material of the wings. Fly wings are small and firm, butterflies are more flappy.
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@ShaulaEvans Honey bee larvae grow in closed cells in the hive, and because they don't want to get that dirty by pooping all over it they have no anuses. After metamorphosis into their adult form they fly out of the hive, see the sun and the world for the first time and respond by taking a massive dump
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Hey, Fedi. I have a favour to ask you. Help me help a friend. (Not financial!)
I have a friend who is all about cool bug facts. They're going through an intense patch in their life, so I would like to send them some bug facts to cheer them up. But this is really their thing, so basic search engine results aren't going to new to them.
If there's a cool bug fact that you genuinely love, could you tell me? I'll save them to share with my friend over time. 1/n
@ShaulaEvans rove beetles (Staphylinidae) are not only (one of) the largest family in the animal kingdom, but they use their abdomen to fold their wings under the shortened elytra.
In fact, their wings have distinct folding lines, but it doesn't matter if the left or the the right wing is on top of the other while folding.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhU9NhHIYQc -
ps:
the latin nomenclature for the crypt-keeper wasp is "Euderus Set"
The ancient Egyptian god Set trapped his brother Osiris in a coffin, then killed him and chopped him up into pieces
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Hey, Fedi. I have a favour to ask you. Help me help a friend. (Not financial!)
I have a friend who is all about cool bug facts. They're going through an intense patch in their life, so I would like to send them some bug facts to cheer them up. But this is really their thing, so basic search engine results aren't going to new to them.
If there's a cool bug fact that you genuinely love, could you tell me? I'll save them to share with my friend over time. 1/n
@ShaulaEvans I used to have pet stick insects. They are really fun and I know they can go without food for a week because a baby one escaped, and we thought it was dead and then we found it a week later wandering about the ceiling. when we popped it back in the tank.You've never seen a creature eat leaves so fast.Poor little starving thing.
They are all female, but they lay eggs anyway and have babies. I'm slightly envious. -
Not strictly “bugs”, but if broader entomology is their thing…
CW: spiders
Jumping spiders are some of the most intelligent of all spiders, but sadly their lifespans are shorter than their less intelligent relatives. It is thought that it might be due to the energetic demands of not only jumping but their evolution in developing this intelligence.
Bold jumping spiders (Phidippus audax) are named because of how they will happily (and peacefully) investigate a human if the human offers out a hand or something to explore. Other species are usually more cautious. They also have absolutely stunning iridescent chelicerae. And the white marks on the upper side of some individuals’ abdomens can look like a happy face, like this:
These spiders can also be trained and learn quickly. This is probably due to their style of attacking prey by jumping being very risky, so they use all their eyes, each pair being adapted to take in different information like distance or movement, and calculate how, where and when to jump… and whether it is safe! Some of their prey species use Batesian mimicry - where a harmless species evolved to look like another species that has dangerous defences, without actually evolving the dangerous defences.
These spiders are adorable (this is coming from me, a lifelong arachnophobe), especially when they make hilariously bad errors in their jumps, or turn to look at you when you’re around and talk to them. They’re not always “bold” as their name suggests, but just curious, and can often be very cautious and even get scared by their prey!
Lucas the Spider is a cartoon spider based on jumping spiders and goes a long way to show the cuteness and the trials and tribulations of these smol but impressive spoods.
Strictly “bugs”!
One of, if not THE smallest butterfly in the world is the Sinai Baton Blue (Pseudophilotes sinaicus). The smallest recorded wingspan is 6.25 mm, but the average for the species is 9.5 mm.
It lives in a metapopulation (where there are a few population groups dotted around, but many are ephemeral) in the Saint Katherine Protectorate in Egypt. The total area it lives in is less than 7 km square.
These butterflies have only one host plant, Sinai Thyme. Both butterfly and hostplant are endangered. One of the things that puzzles scientists is how the Sinai thyme hostplant reproduces. Many experiments have been done to try to grow more to help support the butterflies, but they haven’t been successful (yet). The existing plants in the valleys are thought to be extremely old.
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@ShaulaEvans I used to have pet stick insects. They are really fun and I know they can go without food for a week because a baby one escaped, and we thought it was dead and then we found it a week later wandering about the ceiling. when we popped it back in the tank.You've never seen a creature eat leaves so fast.Poor little starving thing.
They are all female, but they lay eggs anyway and have babies. I'm slightly envious.@ShaulaEvans also I have a tattoo of a mantis . Which is not a bug fact, but it's cool, so i'm sharing sharing it anyway.
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@KaraLG84 @stevegis_ssg @ShaulaEvans They're quieter because everything wants to eat them, I think. Also the size-shape-material of the wings. Fly wings are small and firm, butterflies are more flappy.
I don't really know much about butterfly flight, but I'm pretty sure fly flight is entirely based on the shedding of vortices from the wing edges. They make the air very chaotic and somehow (aeronautics is not my field!) get lift from that, and the pulsed vortices make the buzzing sound, as I understand it.
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Hey, Fedi. I have a favour to ask you. Help me help a friend. (Not financial!)
I have a friend who is all about cool bug facts. They're going through an intense patch in their life, so I would like to send them some bug facts to cheer them up. But this is really their thing, so basic search engine results aren't going to new to them.
If there's a cool bug fact that you genuinely love, could you tell me? I'll save them to share with my friend over time. 1/n
@ShaulaEvans
I know they aren't insects, but maybe your friend would be interested in the very funky invert that lives round the valley a bit from me. It looks like a caterpillar but is an accomplished ambush predator, shooting out jets of sticky goo to immobilise it's prey. It then injects saliva to dissolve its insides and sucks them out.Fun fact is that it halted construction of a dual carriageway.
For the love of velvet worms
This creature is so old it defies imagination. Its genome is far more complex than ours—big enough to crash one of the country’s most powerful supercomputers. Will we lose the species before we glimpse the ancient stories it has to tell?
New Zealand Geographic (www.nzgeo.com)
I love ghoulish...
