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Trivia ~ Living Things
~Insects ~
If you hear a cricket chirping and you have a watch, you can estimate the temperature where the cricket is. If you can hear more than one, you can tell whether they are experiencing different temperatures.
To calculate the "cricket temperature," count the number of chirps in a 14-second period. Add forty to the result, and you have a rough estimate of the Fahrenheit temperature of the cricket.
This method works best with the snowy tree cricket, whose song sounds like gently ringing sleigh bells. Depending on the species of cricket, you might have to adjust the counting time by one or two seconds, up or down.
Why does it work? Because crickets are cold-blooded creatures, the rate of their metabolism is strictly determined by temperature. The warmer it is, the faster they move and the faster they chirp
The world's termites outweigh the world's humans 10 to 1.
Honeybees maintain their hives at an even 94 degrees Fahrenheit year-round.
The caterpillar of a polyphemus moth (Antheraea polyphemus) will grow to 86,000 times its initial size in 56 days. If a seven-pound human baby were to grow that much, it would weigh about 300 tons. After spending the winter in a cocoon, the adult insect emerges: a huge, brown and white moth with two striking eyespots. It is one of the world's largest moths, with wings spanning almost six inches (15 cm).
The first hearing moths appeared about 50 million years ago, right around the time bats first began using echolocation. This is no coincidence. Moth ears are especially sensitive to the ultrasonic sounds bats emit, and their behavior helps them escape the agile predators.When a flying moth hears the sharp squeak of an approaching bat, it responds by suddenly veering off in an unpredictable direction. It might dive straight down, scoot sideways, or suddenly spin in a loop.
There are some pretty ancient bug species in this world. The cockroach and the dragonfly tend to battle it out for the honor of being considered the oldest. Which is older? The dragonfly comes in at about 320 million years, while the cockroach is but only 280 million years old.
Dragonflies: I love those buggers, as they eat mosquitoes. With its massive eyes, a dragonfly can spot another insect from 60 feet away!
The ant can lift 50 times its own weight, can pull 30 times its own weight and always falls over on its right side when intoxicated.
A cockroach will live nine days without it's head, before it starves to death.
The male praying mantis cannot copulate while its head is attached to its body. The female initiates sex by ripping the males head off.
How long can fleas wait for a meal?
If you've ever been attacked by ankle-biting fleas upon entering a room that hasn't been used for a while, you know that the bloodsucking insects can wait patiently in carpets and furniture, then spring into action within minutes of the arrival of a large mammal.
They wait inside tiny cocoons formed by the young insects in their last stage of growth before becoming adults. Until then, the flea larvae eat organic debris such as the dead skin cells cast off in great numbers by humans and pets.
Even houses that have been abandoned for up to three years can harbor cocooned fleas. The tiny pests are triggered into immediate hatching by the warmth, movement, and exhaled carbon dioxide of their warm-blooded prey.
Bombyx mori, a silkworm moth, has been cultivated for so long that it can no longer exist without human care. Because it has been domesticated, it has lost the ability to fly.
There are more different kinds of insects in existence today than the total of all kinds of other animals put together.
Termites eat wood twice as fast when listening to heavy metal music
A bee has five eyes, two large compound eyes on either side of its head, and three ocelli (primitive eyes) on top of its head to detect light intensity
It's been documented that locusts have formed swarms measuring up to one mile wide, 100 feet deep, and 50 miles long.
They may travel more than 2,000 miles. A swarm this enormous may as many as 40 billion locusts.
Ants keep slaves. Certain species, the so-called sanguinary ants for example, raid the nests of other ant tribes, kill the queen, and kidnap many of the workers. The workers are brought back to the captors' hive, where they are coerced into performing menial tasks.
Now you have another reason to not like ants
As bits of trivia are presented on my e-mail list I will add them here. See them first by sending an e-mail to twotreestrivia-subscribe@topica.com
If you have other good Trivia to add please E-mail me
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