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Blue blood is quite costly
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Did you know one quart of horseshoe crab blood costs $15,000 dollars? The critter's blue blood is a sort of bacteria killing machine that clots around ‘invaders’, eliminating them and protecting horseshoe crabs from lethal infections. Researchers have been harnessing the power of this blue blood to test medical supplies for contamination.
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3709 |
savio |
10 years ago |
Ant-mimicking spiders
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Myrmarachne is a genus of jumping spiders which imitate an ant by waving their front legs in the air to simulate antennae. Some species also look strikingly like ants to avoid being attacked by them!
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2697 |
duddy |
8 years ago |
Next time you experience acne, try not to remember this
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Demodex folliculorum and Demodex brevisare are parasitic mites that particularly favour the hair follicles of eyebrows and eyelashes and measure a mere fraction of a millimeter long. They crawl about your face in the dark to mate and then crawl into the pores to lay their eggs and die. Healthy adults have around one or two mites per square centimetre of facial skin, though people with the condition rosacea can have 10 times more. Demodex does not have an anus and therefore cannot get rid of its faeces. Instead, their abdomen gets bigger and bigger, and when the mite dies it decomposes and releases its faeces all at once into the pore. ...
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5273 |
duddy |
10 years ago |
A dancing spider
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Meet the peacock spider, it has the best dance moves you've ever seen.
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3880 |
duddy |
10 years ago |
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3346 |
duddy |
10 years ago |
Things that happen to spiders while on drugs
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During this experiment, spiders were exposed to a variety of drugs to help determine their effect on the brain. Spiders who had been given marijuana started out well enough, but were unable to maintain focus. Benzedrine (speed) produced spiders who spun enthusiastically, though no great thought or care was put into the web design. Caffeine, one of the most common stimulants taken by humans, produced an erratic web. Chloral hydrate, an ingredient in sleeping pills, made the spiders doze off after barely getting started on the web. Though this 1995 experiment sought to determine toxicity of drugs, it was a continuation of experimentation of spiders on drugs that had started in 1948 by P. N. Witt. ...
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3201 |
duddy |
10 years ago |
Jumping spiders
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Meet the green jumping spider ( Mopsus mormon), Australia’s largest—and perhaps cutest—jumping arachnid. These spiders hunt in the day time, moving fast to attack their prey, and camouflaging against green leaves. If you see one, leave it alone. Although their bite won’t kill you, it’s extremely painful.
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5477 |
duddy |
10 years ago |
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2615 |
duddy |
10 years ago |
A spider with claws!
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Cavers in the Pacific Northwest have discovered a type of spider so unusual it belongs to an entirely new lineage. Researchers describing the creature gave it a genus name - Trogloraptor, or "cave robber" - that derives from both its home habitat and its remarkable claws.
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4272 |
duddy |
9 years ago |
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3529 |
duddy |
9 years ago |
This tike's bite can make people allergic to metal
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After being bitten by the lone star tick, people in the US are experiencing severe allergic reactions to red meat - including hives, swelling, trouble breathing and vomiting. So pretty much every meat lover's worst nightmare.
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5999 |
duddy |
9 years ago |
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6300 |
duddy |
9 years ago |
Nature's gymnast lurking in the deserts of Morocco
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Found in the deserts of Morocco, the cartwheeling spider ( cebrennus rechenbergi) uses all eight of its legs to cartwheel and roll away from predators. Using forward or backward flips, this movement effectively doubles its normal walking speed similar to acrobatic flic-flac movements used by gymnasts. Interestingly, C. rechenbergi is the only spider known to use this unique form of rolling locomotion!
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4146 |
duddy |
8 years ago |