Secret Life of Fleas | I Didn't Know That

Richard Ambrose and Jonny Phillips use a camera with an ultrapowerful lens
to get up close and personal with fleas on man's best friend.

Fleas... What Does Wikipedia Say?

Flea, the common name for the order Siphonaptera, includes 2,500 species of small flightless insects that survive as external parasites of mammals and birds. Fleas live by consuming blood, or hematophagy, from their hosts. Adult fleas grow to about 3 millimetres (1⁄8 inch) long, are usually brown, and have bodies that are "flattened" sideways or narrow, enabling them to move through their host's fur or feathers. They lack wings, but have strong claws preventing them from being dislodged, mouthparts adapted for piercing skin and sucking blood, and hind legs extremely well adapted for jumping. They are able to leap a distance of some 50 times their body length, a feat second only to jumps made by another group of insects, the superfamily of froghoppers. Flea larvae are worm-like with no limbs; they have chewing mouthparts and feed on organic debris left on their host's skin.

Genetic evidence indicates that fleas are a specialised lineage of parasitic scorpionflies sensu lato, most closely related to Nannochoristidae. The earliest known fleas are known from the Middle Jurassic, though modern looking forms do not appear until the Cenozoic. Fleas likely originated on mammals before later parasitising birds. Each species of flea is more or less a specialist with respect to its host animal species: many species never breed on any other host, though some are less selective. Some families of fleas are exclusive to a single host group; for example, the Malacopsyllidae are found only on armadillos, the Ischnopsyllidae only on bats, and the Chimaeropsyllidae only on elephant shrews.

Read more on Wikipedia

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3 Unbelievable Cricket Facts!

Snack Discovery: We may take them for granted when we feed them to our reptiles. But crickets are actually pretty interesting creatures! In this video I explain how to tell males from females, what the long "stick" is at the end of some crickets' abdomens, how they chirp, and how they even act as weathermen! 

Crickets you say...

Crickets are small to medium-sized insects with mostly cylindrical, somewhat vertically flattened bodies. The head is spherical with long slender antennae arising from cone-shaped scapes (first segments) and just behind these are two large compound eyes. On the forehead are three ocelli (simple eyes). The pronotum (first thoracic segment) is trapezoidal in shape, robust, and well-sclerotinized. It is smooth and has neither dorsal nor lateral keels (ridges).

At the tip of the abdomen is a pair of long cerci (paired appendages on rearmost segment), and in females, the ovipositor is cylindrical, long and narrow, smooth and shiny. The femora (third segments) of the back pair of legs are greatly enlarged for jumping. The tibiae (fourth segments) of the hind legs are armed with a number of moveable spurs, the arrangement of which is characteristic of each species. The tibiae of the front legs bear one or more tympani which are used for the reception of sound.

The wings lie flat on the body and are very variable in size between species, being reduced in size in some crickets and missing in others. The fore wings are elytra made of tough chitin, acting as a protective shield for the soft parts of the body and in males, bear the stridulatory organs for the production of sound. The hind pair is membranous, folding fan-wise under the fore wings. In many species, the wings are not adapted for flight.

The largest members of the family are the 5 cm (2 in)-long bull crickets (Brachytrupes) which excavate burrows a metre or more deep. The tree crickets (Oecanthinae) are delicate white or pale green insects with transparent fore wings, while the field crickets (Gryllinae) are robust brown or black insects.

More crickets facts on Wikipedia

When All Else Fails... Call the Professionals

It’s nigh on impossible to calculate with accuracy how many ants are on Earth, but estimates put the number at about ten billion billion. And sometimes, it can feel like a good proportion of those ants are marching through our homes.

Ants usually come indoors in search of food or nesting habitat. Even small amounts of food, like pet food crumbs, can attract hordes of industrious ants.

Ants are one of Earth’s most successful animals, and comprise more than 13,000 species. They live almost everywhere except Antarctica, the high Arctic and a small number of islands.

Despite ants’ ubiquity, people can still be surprised, or even horrified, to see a line of ants crawling along their kitchen bench. So should you get out the insecticide, or learn to live with them?

Article source: The Conversation

A little fun... Ants at war

The Ants Go Marching One By One...

Ants are eusocial insects of the family Formicidae and, along with the related wasps and bees, belong to the order Hymenoptera. Ants appear in the fossil record across the globe in considerable diversity during the latest Early Cretaceous and early Late Cretaceous, suggesting an earlier origin. Ants evolved from vespoid wasp ancestors in the Cretaceous period, and diversified after the rise of flowering plants. More than 13,800 of an estimated total of 22,000 species have been classified. They are easily identified by their geniculate (elbowed) antennae and the distinctive node-like structure that forms their slender waists.
Source: Wikipedia

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Inquiring Minds Want to Know...

The following questions were answered by zoo biologist Ellen Dierenfeld and entomologists John VanDyk and Steve Kutcher.

Q: Is there a difference between an insect and a bug?

A: Yes, there is a difference.

A bug is a certain type of insect. Some examples you might be familiar with are the boxelder bug, milkweed bug, assassin bug, and stink bug.

True bugs have a stylet (a mouth shaped like a straw) that they use to suck plant juices from plants. The assassin bugs use their stylets to suck blood from other insects.

The front wings of true bugs are thickened and colored near where they are attached to the insect's body, and are clearer and thinner towards the hind end of the wing. The hind wings are usually clear and tucked underneath the front wings.

Q: What is the largest insect?

A: In the book Beetles by Bernard Klaustnizer, there is a beetle called the South American longhorn beetle (Tytanus giganteus) that measures 25 cm! The heaviest insect is probably the African goliath beetle (Megasoma elephas), weighing up to 3.4 oz. And the longest insect is a huge stick insect (Pharnacia serritypes). The females can be over 36 cm in length!!

Q: Is there an insect that is worth money?

A: There are many, many insects that are worth money. For example, the pollination work done for free by insects would cost billions of dollars every year. Think about how much honey costs! Those bees are worth a lot of money. And insects like the praying mantis or ladybird beetle happily take care of eating harmful insects, saving money that could be spent on pesticides. There are also silk moths that produce silk, insects that produce shellac, and some insects that are canned and eaten! Make sure you don't let the reputation of a few harmful insects prevent you from noticing all the good ones.

Continue reading on Scholastic General Facts About Insects and Bugs

Fun with bugs and kids

Critter Crafts: Egg Carton Ant

All you need is an empty egg carton and some craft supplies like paint and pipe cleaners to make an ant that can live in your house without invading your kitchen! For more fun, visit PestWorldForKids.org

Got Mice?

Tom & Jerry | Trapping Jerry | Classic Cartoon | WB Kids

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