Hey, Fedi. Help me help a friend.
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@afewbugs
Aphids are born pregnant. They are some of the most rapidly multiplying animals. If lady bugs (their primary predator) were to go extinct, we'd be up to our literal asses in aphids in a few months.Also aphids are one of the only animals to have been domesticated by non-human animals, as far as we know. Leaf-cutter ants raise them for food. They don't eat them, but lick their butts, where they secrete a sugary nectar.
@ShaulaEvans@Mux @afewbugs @ShaulaEvans real life tribbles
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@ShaulaEvans oh wait! I do have a fav fact. Cicadas are associated with the atua Rehua. His particular sphere of interest is kindness, enjoyment, entertainment. He is the star Antares, and he has two wives who are the stars Alniyat and Tau Scorpii. In the sky they are at the points of a v- shape. Antares rises in the morning during summer. Cicadas appear in summer. One of the cicadas has three dots on its head in the shape of Rehua and his wives.
Okay, so perhaps more indigenous knowledge than a bug fact.
@exlibrarykris @ShaulaEvans no, that's definitely a bug fact
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I don't really know much about butterfly flight, but I'm pretty sure fly flight is entirely based on the shedding of vortices from the wing edges. They make the air very chaotic and somehow (aeronautics is not my field!) get lift from that, and the pulsed vortices make the buzzing sound, as I understand it.
@stevegis_ssg @Akki @KaraLG84 @ShaulaEvans is that anything like why pigeons are so loud and owls are completely silent?
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@ShaulaEvans how about these:
- domestic honeybees have specialized roles at the hive entrance, easiest to see with a slow motion camera. The entrance operates a bit like an airport. There's a bee who frisks incoming bees to confirm that they belong, a bee who sniffs incoming bees like one of those drug dogs to verify pheramone signature, an air traffic control bee who watches inbound and outbound bees, a security bee who leaps into action upon signal from the other bees to kick out intruders and imposters.
- bees have also been shown in studies to possibly be able to: do math, recognize faces, experience ptsd, and play
- the spongy moth was introduced to the US by a guy who was hoping to corner a new silk market, but he lost control of the caterpillars and they became an extremely invasive species there, oops
- not bugs obviously but they might still find this cool: spiders have been found to communicate with each other via drumming
@growfediverse @ShaulaEvans How we learned that bees experience time like humans do:
- teach them that food will be available just outside the hive at the same time every day
- once they've figured that out, move an entire hive from Paris to New York
- bees come looking for the food when it would be available in Paris, not the same time of day in New YorkAnd that's how we learned bees get jet lag.
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@EthanJMooney @ShaulaEvans wait what
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@stevegis_ssg @Akki @KaraLG84 @ShaulaEvans is that anything like why pigeons are so loud and owls are completely silent?
@WizardOfDocs @Akki @KaraLG84 @ShaulaEvans
Sort of, I think! Owls need to be silent so they evolved feather-shaping mechanisms that suppress vortex-shedding. Pigeons don't, especially, so with cost and no benefit they didn't get them.
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@stevegis_ssg @Akki @KaraLG84 @ShaulaEvans is that anything like why pigeons are so loud and owls are completely silent?
@WizardOfDocs @stevegis_ssg @ShaulaEvans I think moths generally have more straight flight patterns than butterflies for avoidance (visual during the day for butterflies. Twisty tails for moths for sonar confusion instead)
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@ShaulaEvans I don't know if stick insects are Officially Bugs or not, but there's a species in Papua New Guinea which sprays when agitated, and the locals use it as an Antibacterial Spray Insect.
Other interesting stick insect facts here: https://deborah.makarios.nz/2019/10/29/the-weird-and-wonderful-stick-insect/
@DMakarios @ShaulaEvans speaking of bug spray, some species of birds have learned to rub ants on themselves, using the ants' formic acid to help keep their feathers clean
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@ShaulaEvans rove beetles (Staphylinidae) are not only (one of) the largest family in the animal kingdom, but they use their abdomen to fold their wings under the shortened elytra.
In fact, their wings have distinct folding lines, but it doesn't matter if the left or the the right wing is on top of the other while folding.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhU9NhHIYQc@mossesandbees @ShaulaEvans and elytra in Minecraft are named for beetle elytra, implying that an update to the End dimension should include giant beetles
That might be too much of a digression, but I really want craftable elytra
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@stevegis_ssg @Akki @KaraLG84 @ShaulaEvans is that anything like why pigeons are so loud and owls are completely silent?
@WizardOfDocs @stevegis_ssg @Akki @KaraLG84 @ShaulaEvans
I think flies buzz because they flap their wings very quickly, while butterflies flap much slower.
Owls are so quiet because the surface of their feathers is soft. The edge of the feather also. Quiet hunters. -
@inj4n we often call every small arthropod a “bug”, but actually that’s not true. Because taxonomically there is an order of insects that is commonly called true bugs, the order Hemiptera. Some groups that belong to Hemiptera are cicadas or shield bugs (Wanzen in German) for example.
To list the differences between “bugs” would be too much for this post, but when we stick with beetles and flies for example, we can say that beetles have two pairs of wings, of which one is hardened (elytra). Flies on the other hand have one pair of wings and a pair of reduced wings (halteres). This also distinguishes a fly from a bee, which has two pairs of wings.
(Of course, there are many more differences, but as I said, this would be too much to put in a post like this :D)@mossesandbees @inj4n six legs and four wings. Huh. They actually have ten limbs, like lobsters.
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@inj4n @lavievagabonde @ShaulaEvans Grace Hopper?! That’s hilarious!
@AdamStuartSmith @inj4n @lavievagabonde @ShaulaEvans I believe it was one of her students, but yeah, finding a grasshopper in your mainframe would be a hell of a bug
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@ShaulaEvans Incredibly, there is a single group of insects which have a winged instar before adulthood. And strangely enough, it’s the mayflies. They molt into a winged form, which lives for a few minutes to a couple of days, which _then_ molts into the sexually mature adult form.
@pikhq @ShaulaEvans so the metaphor of mayflies being ephemeral is just about adolescence?
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@benroyce Different galls have different concentrations of tannin. @Pepijn used oak marble galls in the photos (named for obvious reasons) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andricus_kollari. Historically though in Europe the best ink was made from imported Aleppo galls from Syria - apparently Jane Austin was very particular about her ink and this was what she used. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynips_quercusfolii I can't find the reference in the book right now, but a common name for Aleppo galls was apparently mad apple of Sodom!
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@pikhq @ShaulaEvans so the metaphor of mayflies being ephemeral is just about adolescence?
@WizardOfDocs @ShaulaEvans No, that's the thing that makes it so weird. Their winged adult forms are all also super short-lived.
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Hey, Fedi. Help me help a friend. (Not financial!)
I have a friend who is all about cool bug facts. They're going through an intense patch in their life, so I would like to send them some bug facts to cheer them up. But this is really their thing, so basic search engine results aren't going to new to them.
If there's a cool bug fact that you genuinely love, could you tell me? I'll save them to share with my friend over time. 1/n
@ShaulaEvans I checked my FediFeed this morning and found a flood of cool posts about insects, instead of the usual doom and news about fascism. I had no idea why all the bug people were out until I scrolled for enough to find your post asking for cool insect facts.
I love this place.
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@ShaulaEvans And another one: an impressive example of moth long-distance navigation capability, and a lovely piece of research to track and analyze their flight strategy.
The navigation strategies of migrating death’s-head hawkmoths rival those of birds.
Death's-head hawk moths are able to fly perfectly, even with crosswinds. Now we finally know how
The creepy moth found in the throats of murder victims in The Silence of the Lambs is helping unlock the mysteries of long-haul migration.
(www.abc.net.au)
@dazzr @ShaulaEvans
They also squeak -
Hey, Fedi. Help me help a friend. (Not financial!)
I have a friend who is all about cool bug facts. They're going through an intense patch in their life, so I would like to send them some bug facts to cheer them up. But this is really their thing, so basic search engine results aren't going to new to them.
If there's a cool bug fact that you genuinely love, could you tell me? I'll save them to share with my friend over time. 1/n
@ShaulaEvans my favourite fact is that it's theorised that moths are fluffy to help throw off sonar by bats, and a reliableish way to tell if a moth is male or female is to check its antennae; extra thick antenna mean male!
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Hey, Fedi. Help me help a friend. (Not financial!)
I have a friend who is all about cool bug facts. They're going through an intense patch in their life, so I would like to send them some bug facts to cheer them up. But this is really their thing, so basic search engine results aren't going to new to them.
If there's a cool bug fact that you genuinely love, could you tell me? I'll save them to share with my friend over time. 1/n
@ShaulaEvans I love the idea of animals evolving wheels, but unfortunately that has not happened yet as far as I know. However there is a bug, "Planthopper", that technically with a little bit of stretching the concept has _gears_.
It doesn't actually convey continuous rotation with them, but it interlocks its legs to get stable movement when launching as I understand it.
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Hey, Fedi. Help me help a friend. (Not financial!)
I have a friend who is all about cool bug facts. They're going through an intense patch in their life, so I would like to send them some bug facts to cheer them up. But this is really their thing, so basic search engine results aren't going to new to them.
If there's a cool bug fact that you genuinely love, could you tell me? I'll save them to share with my friend over time. 1/n
@ShaulaEvans This is the coolest bug I've seen recently (article by @grrlscientist
https://www.forbes.com/sites/grrlscientist/2025/10/04/half-male-half-female-spider-discovered-in-thailand-is-new-to-science/
