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Sunda pangolins
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Sunda pangolins have become the most frequently seized mammal in the illegal wildlife trade in Asia, as smugglers sell the creatures to meet culinary and medicinal demand. These gentle insectivores are now on the endangered species list.
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6497 |
bio_man |
11 years ago |
Termites are nature's architects
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Termites are pretty astonishing creatures by anyone's standards -- their queens are thirty times the size of soldiers and they produce an amazing thirty eggs per minute. Relative to their size, termites build the largest structures in the animal kingdom. Their towers can reach an incredible 25ft (7.6m) high and 40ft across (12.1m) - and that's just above the ground! They can burrow as far as 225ft (68m) below the surface.
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4261 |
duddy |
11 years ago |
Ant careers
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It turns out that ants are capable of making career moves.Computer tracking of ants shows that colonies have three main occupations: nursing the queen, cleaning, and foraging for food. Younger ants typically stay near the queen, but as they get older, they make the transition to foraging. This transition with regards to age was an exciting discovery, giving more insight into ant behavior. Source: http://www.nature.com/news/tracking-whole-colonies-shows-ants-make-career-moves-1.12833 ...
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3617 |
ehd123 |
11 years ago |
Ants: Crashing picnics for 158 million years
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There are over 12,000 species of ants in the world, and a new tree of life has been published to better understand how they are all related. Their evolutionary origins have been traced to the tropics in South America, where they play a critical role in maintaining the health of the ecosystem.
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3284 |
duddy |
11 years ago |
Don't like centipedes? They may be beneficial
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If you have a house centipede crawling around on your floors, you’re in luck! These little guys feed on pests such as termites, cockroaches, spiders, and ants to keep your home’s biodiversity to a minimum. Adult centipedes have 15 pairs of legs that help it achieve top speeds of 0.4 meters per second. To mate, centipedes become acquainted through the touching of antennae, and the male deposits sperm onto the ground, which the female then uses to fertilize her eggs.
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4197 |
duddy |
10 years ago |
Self-sacrificing honeypot ants
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More than thirty species of ant have a caste known as 'honeypot ants'. These essentially act as living pantries for other ants in the colony. They consume large quantities of food until the abdomen is incredibly engorged. When worker ants lack other food sources, honeypot ants simply regurgitate out nutrients for them to eat. In some parts of the world, eating honeypot ants is viewed as a sweet delicacy.
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4590 |
duddy |
10 years ago |
Here's why I hate centipedes
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The Amazonian giant centipede is the largest centipede alive, reaching lengths of 30 centimeters. They are carnivorous and feed on lizards, snakes, mice, and even bats. While their venom is not enough to kill an adult human, it may cause reactions with the skin.
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4962 |
duddy |
10 years ago |
A monster of an ant
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The bullet ant, or Paraponera clavata, lives throughout Central and South America. What makes this ant a formidable insect are its large mandibles and stinger. The bullet ant is one of the largest ants, growing to a length of just under 1 inch. Most notable about the ant is its ability to produce an excruciating sting.
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3274 |
bio_man |
10 years ago |
Gruesome bloodsuckers
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Assassin bugs use a mouth tube to inject toxin into their prey. This toxin acts as an anaesthetic and also liquifies tissues, the easier to suck you dry with. There are thousands of assassin bug species; some eat only other insects and some attack reptiles, birds, and mammals. This assassin bug is turning the tables on a vampire bat. Notice how you can see the blood entering the young insect.
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2661 |
bio_man |
10 years ago |
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2411 |
duddy |
10 years ago |
World's most dangerous spider
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Latrodectus mactans, or Southern black widow or simply black widow, is a highly venomous species of spider. They are well known for the distinctive black and red coloring of the female of the species and for the fact that she will occasionally eat her mate after reproduction (hence the name – Black widow). The species is native to North America. The venom might be fatal to humans. Although these spiders are not especially large, their venom is extremely potent. They are capable to inject the venom to a point where it can be harmful. The males, being much smaller, inject far less venom. The actual amount injected, even by a mature female, is very small in physical volume. When this small amount of venom is diffused throughout the body of a he ...
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2383 |
duddy |
10 years ago |
One giant hornet
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The Japanese giant hornet kills about 40 people each year, and being stung by one feels “like a hot nail” going through the flesh.
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2069 |
duddy |
10 years ago |
Giraffes come in various forms
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This is the giraffe weevil from Madagascar, which, as you might have guessed, gets its name from its long neck. Males use their extra long necks for fighting, while females use theirs to roll a leaf nest, into which an egg is laid during reproduction.
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2487 |
duddy |
10 years ago |
Would you like to try a gluten-free diet or a helminth?
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Parasitologist espouses using parasitic worms for treatment of autoimmune diseases – Dr. Joel Weinstock, at Tufts Medical Center in a commentary piece published in the journal Nature, describes work that he and colleagues have been involved in that focuses on studying the possibility of introducing parasitic worms into the guts of patients suffering from autoimmune diseases such as Crohn's disease. The thinking he says, is that modern hygienic lifestyles may be contributing to such diseases and that reintroducing parasitic worms and perhaps certain bacteria into the gut may restore a natural balance in the gut and relieve patients of such symptoms as chronic diarrhea, bleeding and infections. Source: http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-11-p ...
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3480 |
duddy |
10 years ago |
Beetles the size of period
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The water beetle is about 1 mm in length and has been named Hydraena ateneo. Most of the discoveries made in the Philippines occur in their forests, making this discovery even more surprising.
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3546 |
duddy |
10 years ago |