insects (Page 5)

Are the Grays the same thing? – Are the Grays actually an evolutionary form of hive insects from the future? Anne Strieber addresses this theory in our first Dreamland of 2010 (NOTE: subscriberscan still listen to this show).

For more than a century, biologists have marveled at the highly cooperative nature of ants, bees and other social insects that work together to determine the survival and growth of a colony. Now researchers have discovered that insect colonies follow some of the same biological

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Once we learned that they can survive a nuclear war (while we won’t). Now it turns out they’re impervious to global warming as well. I guess we have to accept the fact that they will always be around (even if we are not).

Researchers have learned that cockroaches can hold their breath for as long as 40 minutes, which will help them survive the rise in sea levels. In fact, they actually change the way they breathe in response to changes in humidity, oxygen levels and CO2 levels.

New Scientist, Shanta Barley quotes researcher George McGavin as saying, “Two hundred and fifty million years of physiological fine tuning has produced a creature that will be around for a long time to come. Cockroaches, I’m afraid to say, will do well in the face of climate change.”read more

We now know that bacteria plan ahead. New research has revealed that some plants are hypochondriacs. Nature has a lot to tell us if we’ll only listen.

They don’t actually THINK they’re sick when they’re not, the way human hypochondriacs do. What they do is PRETEND to be sick, in order to fend off attacks by moths that only want to lay their eggs on healthy leaves. These strangely wonderful plants are only found in the rainforests of Ecuador, which is yet another reason to preserve these valuable places.
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Bugs can be useful?but most of the time, they’re annoying?especially flies. Scientists have finally figured out why they’re so hard to swat!

It turns out that flies (unlike most humans) have an incredible ability to plan ahead. They can quickly see where a threat is coming from, so they can dodge our swatters before they reach them.

In BBC News, Matt McGrath quotes researcher Michael Dickinson as saying, “We’ve found that when the fly makes planning movements prior to take-off, it takes into account its body position at the time it first sees the threat. Our experiments showed that the fly somehow ‘knows’ whether it needs to make large or small postural changes.”
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