Ants have something similar to blood, but it’s called haemolymph. Some insects use it in unusual ways. When threatened by a predator, blister beetles can squirt haemolymph from their knees.
With the onset of cooler temperatures and shorter days, some insects pack-up and migrate to warmer climates. Others, including stink bugs, take up residence in our homes.
When a fly’s feeling hungry, it will land on its food and vomit out a mix of saliva and stomach acids.
Wikimedia
Insects are an excellent tool to fight hunger and malnutrition because they are abundant and nutritious.
Some Harlequin ladybugs, Harmonia axyridis, have black elytra with two large red spots. Others have two additional red spots backwards, or are decorated with a dozen small red spots. Conversely, there are ladybugs with red elytra, decorated with 20 black spots. All these ladybugs belong to the same species.
B. Prud’homme, J. Yamaguchi
Yes, giant mosquitoes are a thing. They’re specialized to wait out the dry times only to emerge from their eggs when high water provides the perfect larval environment.
Trees have died in Rocky Mountain National Park, Colo., as climate change has intensified bark beetle infestations and drought.
Patrick Gonzalez
As climate change alters temperature and precipitation patterns across the US, it is having especially severe impacts on national parks. These changes could happen faster than many plants and animals can adapt.
Romain Garrouste, Muséum national d’histoire naturelle (MNHN) e André Nel, Muséum national d’histoire naturelle (MNHN)
They hovered in the skies of the Earth 300 million years ago… The giant dragonflies will soon be the stars of the paleontology gallery of France’s Natural History Museum in Paris.
Inside the pupa (or chrysalis), the caterpillar actually turns to liquid as it transforms into a butterfly or moth.
Shutterstock
Scientists were not sure if an adult butterfly could remember things it learned as a caterpillar. Then a study by a team of US scientists found something very interesting.
A honey bee sniffs a cherry blossom.
AP Photo/Patrick Pleul
If the insect wants to stay right in front of your nose, it must fly forwards just a little bit when the car is speeding up. But when the car is at constant speed, it only needs to hover.
Not interested in your new favorite band.
TJ Gehling
An AC/DC-loving biologist tests the band’s 1980 assertion that “rock ‘n’ roll ain’t noise pollution.” Turns out it can be – and the negative effects of noise can ripple through an ecosystem.
Male spiny leaf insect, Extatosoma tiaratum.
James O’Hanlon