Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Insects trivia

Insects

» The animal responsible for the most human deaths worldwide is the mosquito.

» The animal with the largest brain in proportion to its size is the ant.

» The ant has the largest brain in the animal kingdom, in proportion to its size.

» The are more different kinds of insects on existence today than the total of all kinds of other animals put together.

» "Formication" is a hallucination that bugs or snakes are crawling on or under the skin, and is common to amphetamine and cocaine users. This hallucination is also referred to as "crank bugs."

» Bombyx mori, a silkworm moth, has been cultivated for so long that it can no longer exist without human care. Because it has been domesticated, it has lost the ability to fly.

» Drosophila, the small fruit fly, has been warmly received by the scientific community, mainly owing to the giant-sized chromosomes possessed by the cells of its salivary glands. These chromosomes, which can stretch to more than a mile long when unraveled, allow scientists to study DNA using only a sheet of white paper and a bright table lamp.

» A bee could travel 4 million miles (6.5 million km) at 7 mph (11 km/h) on the energy it would obtain from 1 gallon (3.785 liters) of nectar.

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