Interesting facts about dipterous insects are presented in this article.
Diptera insects - representatives of the order invertebrates, class of insects. They are distinguished by the presence of a fashionable pair of wings and complete metamorphosis. Today more than 100,000 species are known. Prominent representatives are flies, mosquitoes, midges, horseflies. They are distributed everywhere from the tundra to the deserts of the tropics. According to archaeological excavations, dipterans lived back in the Jurassic period.
They are not social insects; they rarely gather in flocks - only for resting, mating and in case of a large amount of food. Most lead a solitary lifestyle.
Diptera: interesting facts
Unlike most insects with two pairs of wings, mosquitoes and flies have retained only the front pair of wings during evolution.
Horseflies began to be called so because of the myopia of insects. They perceive objects that are in motion at great distances. That is, they do not see the object itself, but directly the movement, which they perceive as their prey. They often pursue inedible objects - trains and cars. Horseflies accumulate in the habitats of large domestic animals.
Flies love the droppings of large animals (especially cows and horses), as they are rich in semi-digested food residues. The larvae feed on them. For this reason, flies lay their eggs in manure.
The most dangerous insects on the planet - these are mosquitoes. They carry deadly viruses and bacteria. By the way, only females bite people and animals. Males feed on plant sap and nectar.
Mosquitoes appeared more than 175 million years ago during the Jurassic era. Insects caught in amber contain dinosaur DNA.
In New Zealand and Australia you can see unusual mosquitoes - “mushroom mosquitoes”. They are harmless and feed on underground fungi that grow in damp and dark caves. Their larvae can produce energy like fireflies, creating extraordinary “patterns” on the ceilings of caves.
The most bloodthirsty insects - tsetse flies. They attack all warm objects...even a running car! Only the zebras were saved from them. Scientists are still wondering why their black and white color repels insects.
Fossil mosquitoes reached up to 5 cm in length.
In the town of Komarno (Canada) the largest mosquito monument The steel statue was installed in 1984. The wingspan of a metal insect is 5 m.
Housefly (Musca domestica) is a very common insect that everyone has encountered. But how much do you know about them? Here are 10 fascinating and interesting facts about house flies that you might not know.
1. Houseflies are found almost everywhere there are people.
House flies come from Central Asia, but currently they live in almost all corners of the globe. With the exception of Antarctica and perhaps a few outlying islands, houseflies live everywhere there are people. They are synanthropic organisms that depend on humans, their homes and domestic animals.
Since people have been traveling since time immemorial by ship, plane, train or horse-drawn carriage, flies always accompany us along the way. On the contrary, they are rarely found in the desert or in places where there are no people. If humanity ceases to exist, these insects may share our fate.
2. House flies are relatively young insects on the evolutionary time scale
The family of true flies are ancient creatures that appeared on Earth during the Permian period more than 250 million years ago. But houseflies appear relatively young compared to their dipteran cousins. The oldest fossil remains of these insects are only 70 million years old.
This suggests that the housefly's closest ancestors appeared during the Cretaceous period, shortly before the infamous meteorite struck that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs.
photo: flickr.com/photos/feepee/
3. House flies reproduce quickly
If it were not for the reproductive limitations imposed by environmental conditions and predation, the planet would be buried under a swarm of flies. Musca domestica has a short life cycle- only 6 days, and the average clutch of a female contains about 120 eggs.
Scientists have calculated what would happen if one pair of flies could reproduce without restrictions or mortality among the offspring. Result? Two flies in just 5 months will lead to the appearance of 191,010,000,000,000,000,000,000 descendants, which will cover the planet with a layer of several meters.
4. House flies rarely fly long distances.
The wing movement of a housefly can reach up to 1000 beats per minute. This is not a typo! Surprisingly, they tend to be slow fliers, flying at speeds of around 7 km per hour. Flies move when environmental conditions force them to do so.
In urban areas, where people live in close proximity and there is a lot of garbage, houseflies have small territories and fly within 1000 meters. Although, rural flies in search of manure can travel long distances, covering up to 11 km. The longest flight distance recorded for a housefly is 32 km.
photo: flickr.com/photos/akshaymhetras/
5. House flies live off waste.
Houseflies feed and breed in the waste we produce: garbage, animal manure, wastewater, human excrement and other unpleasant substances. In the suburbs or rural areas, these insects are numerous in fields where fishmeal and manure are used as fertilizers, as well as compost heaps where there are accumulations of rotting herbs and vegetables.
6. Houseflies are on an all-liquid diet.
They have spongy mouthparts that are good for sucking up liquefied substances, but not for solid foods. Thus, the fly either looks for food that is already liquid or finds a way to liquefy the food source. When a housefly discovers something tasty but hard, it vomits on the food (which could be your barbecue). The vomit contains digestive enzymes that liquefy the food so the insect can eat it.
photo: flickr.com/photos/trekman/
7. Flies detect the taste of food using their legs.
How do flies determine that food is edible? They're stepping on her! Like butterflies, houseflies have taste buds on the bottom of their legs. Once a fly lands on something interesting, such as garbage, a pile of horse manure, or your lunch, it begins sampling potential food simply by walking around it.
8. Houseflies transmit many diseases
Because flies thrive in places that are rife with pathogens, they have a bad habit of carrying pathogens with them from place to place. The insect will land on a pile of dog food, inspect it with its legs, and then fly over to your table and stroll across your hamburger bun.
Houseflies are known to transmit at least 65 diseases and infections, including cholera, dysentery, giardiasis, typhus, leprosy, conjunctivitis, salmonella and many others.
photo: flickr.com/photos/millsap/
9. Flies can walk upside down
You've probably noticed that flies walk on the ceiling, but do you know how they accomplish this gravity-defying feat? Each of the housefly's legs has clawed feet with a sticky pad, so the insect is able to cling to almost any surface - from smooth window glass to the ceiling.
10. Flies defecate frequently
Because houseflies live on a liquid diet, food moves through their digestive tract quite quickly. Thus, in addition to vomiting on foods that insects consider edible, they often abandon their experiments. Remember this the next time you touch food that has had a fly on it.
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The distant ancestors of modern mosquitoes appeared in the Jurassic period, approximately 170 million years ago. So they managed to drink blood from the dinosaurs. But let's return from the past to the present and present some Interesting Facts about mosquitoes.
Mosquitoes are relatives of flies, and belong to order Diptera, which means dipterous in Latin. The word “Mosquito” is translated from Spanish as “little fly.”
In Rus', the word mosquito most likely came from the behavior of mosquitoes, that is, a derivative of “a swarming, buzzing insect huddled in a circle.”
There are approximately 3,000 species of mosquitoes on the planet, and they are found from the Arctic tundra to tropical rainforests. They enter the active phase at temperatures above 12.7°C, which is why they prefer to live in warmer latitudes.
The male mosquito feeds on nectar and drinks water, just like butterflies. But females bite to suck blood. They need plasma to bear offspring. And now we know which mosquitoes drink blood and why it is necessary.
During the mating season, males form a swarm and circle in front of the females. This happens after sunset. Females, when approaching a swarm, choose medium-sized males, since large ones are less able to stay in the air.
During this period, a whole invasion of mosquitoes is observed in forests, swamps, and even in cities. But males prefer young, more mature females.
This dipteran has a stinger called a mosquito proboscis. But the insect makes an annoying squeak with its wings.
In addition, when meeting a representative of the opposite sex, mosquitoes synchronize the flapping of their wings and squeak, as they say, in unison.
Man fights mosquitoes as best he can, inventing new ways. But mosquitoes also have natural problems. Among birds there are many species that happily eat this small creature.
But during the wind, mosquitoes do not bite, because due to their low weight they are simply blown away and cannot land on the body.
Like most dipteran insects, the mosquito's life cycle consists of 4 stages: egg-larva-pupa-imago. It is noteworthy that mosquitoes grow from egg to adult in 4 days.
Mosquitoes, so to speak, are patriots of their historical homeland. Having hatched from an egg, during their entire life they do not move more than 1 km from their place of birth.
But at the same time. If they are hungry, they can travel up to 65 km in search of food, and can smell food from a distance of 50 m.
These annoying but amazing insects have infrared vision, so they are excellent at navigating in the dark.
And one more remarkable fact is that at midnight, as experts have noted, the activity of “little vampires” increases 500 times.
By the way, about the most poisonous insects planets on our website there is an interesting article.
They are so small that when it starts to rain, they can fly freely between the drops for five minutes.
In addition, the low weight allows you to walk freely on the web without attracting the spider’s attention. Due to their low weight, they can still walk on water.
We already know that only females bite, and they live much longer than males. So how long does a mosquito live?
The average lifespan of a mosquito is 14 days, but females, under proper conditions and nutrition, live up to 45 days. As you can see, the lifespan of a mosquito is short, but when it is in a house or apartment, it causes enough trouble.
There are many reasons for the death of mosquitoes, but the main ones are cold, hunger, oversaturation, as well as death from the insectivorous inhabitants of our planet.
Zoologists put forward many hypotheses and theories as to why mosquitoes bite some people and not others.
The chemistry of our body is, of course, unique, but for mosquitoes, the main thing is the smell and the amount of carbon dioxide and sweat released by the human body.
Blood type also plays an important role. So what blood type do mosquitoes like? Scientists have noticed that a person with group I is attacked by mosquitoes twice as often as those with group II.
Here's another interesting thing about mosquitoes. Females more often bite representatives of the fair sex. And among women they prefer to drink blood from blondes. So brunettes, brown-haired women and redheads can feel relatively safe.
Killer mosquitoes
Mosquito bites, even if they are not carriers dangerous viruses, cause severe itching and allergies. In Russia, the number of people who go to hospitals after mosquito bites increases every year.
But allergies and itching are not the worst thing, and in tropical latitudes mosquitoes kill people by infecting them with fatal diseases through their bites.
It is difficult to imagine who agreed to such an experiment, but Canadian scientists have found that about 9 thousand individuals bite a naked person in the tundra in one hour.
I wonder what painkillers were offered for itching to the person who agreed to such an experiment.
On average, adults do not grow more than 14 mm, and the wingspan ranges from 5 to 30 mm.
In the Canadian town of Komarno there is the largest monument to this insect, with a wingspan of 5 m.
No matter how hard humanity fights these biting insects, they cannot be completely destroyed. In fact, this will lead to an irreparable environmental disaster.
But in Singapore they managed to get rid of them completely. In this country, you can even get a fine for leaving water in a pot when watering flowers, an ideal environment for mosquitoes.
Historians and geneticists for a long time tried to find dinosaur blood. And then one day a biochemist discovered traces of blood in the body of a mosquito that had lain in shale rocks for more than 40 million years.
This specimen allowed us to trace the evolution of mosquitoes, and confirmed that these insects have been drinking blood for tens of millions of years.
Finally, let’s find out what a mosquito looks like under a microscope. A mosquito in an enlarged form is a bit of an unusual sight and looks terrifying.
The piercing-sucking apparatus, as seen in the photo, has a complex structure. It was by examining this insect with a microscope that scientists found that when it bites, the mosquito inserts six needles into the victim’s body at once.
Throughout history, humanity has been trying to fight mosquitoes, coming up with new ways to protect against these annoying insects. IN modern world An electronic mosquito repeller is considered the most effective, and biologists are already changing their genetics so that these insects produce non-viable offspring.
Mosquitoes appeared in the Jurassic era, more than 175 million years ago, so even dinosaurs inherited them.
Mosquitoes (or mosquitoes) belong to the order Diptera(relatives of flies, "Mosquito" means "little fly" in Spanish), suborder Nematocera("with thin antennae"), family Culicidae.
There are more than 3,000 species of mosquitoes, found in both the Arctic tundra and tropical rainforests. At the same time, all types of mosquitoes become active at a temperature of 12.7 degrees Celsius, so their highest concentration is, of course, in warm and humid forests, swamps, and dry deserts.
Peak activity of mosquitoes occurs at dusk and night; during the day they rest, hiding in houses and plants. During the day, mosquitoes are food for other species of animals.
There are mosquitoes different sizes, up to 12.5 mm. Fossil mosquitoes reached 5 centimeters in length!
Mosquitoes do not bite, but suck. 1,200,000 mosquitoes are enough to drain all the blood from a person. These are, of course, theoretical calculations, because before that a person will die from irritation and painful shock.
An experiment in the Canadian tundra showed that people with bare arms, legs and torso received 9,000 bites from young mosquitoes per minute. At this rate, a person can lose half their blood in two hours.
Only female mosquitoes bite. They bite both people and other vertebrates, from mice and turtles, sucking their blood. Such food is necessary for females to bear offspring. Some species of mosquitoes can give birth without previously sucking blood, but at the first opportunity they do not refuse it (species Culex). One drop of blood gives life to thousands of mosquito eggs. The most “tasty” blood for mosquitoes is from people with the first and second blood groups, as well as children.
Male mosquitoes do not suck blood; they feed on plant matter and nectar.
A mosquito sting looks simple, but under high magnification it turns into complex design. It consists of six parts - two tubes, salivary and nutritious, surrounded by two sharp lower jaws and two "scalpels" with saw-toothed teeth. All 6 parts are enclosed in a protective shell along the entire length. When bitten, the sting plunges several millimeters into the skin until it reaches a small blood vessel.
Mosquitoes have olfactory and heat-sensing organs located on a pair of antennae and three pairs of legs that guide them towards prey, which reveals itself through increased concentrations of carbon dioxide, heat and sweat.
They are voracious, hardy and ubiquitous - these are not all the interesting facts about insects. Want to know more? A selection of 15 reliable information from the life of representatives of the largest class of animals on Earth will help you with this.
- Mosquitoes feed on plant sap and nectar. But some of them suck blood not out of hunger, but to obtain proteins necessary for bearing offspring. Thus, only females are bloodsuckers, and males are absolute vegetarians.
- Despite the fact that the female mosquito is forced to consume blood, she chooses the “dish” meticulously. Females are bitten by females more often than males, and blondes are preferred to brunettes. Gourmets identify victims by smell: they like fat people, athletes, pregnant women, owners of the second and third blood groups.
- One of the reasons for the prevalence of mosquitoes in environment– greater viability of their eggs. The offspring of insects do not care about unfavorable conditions. Mosquito eggs can lie in cold, dry soil for up to 3 years, and then come to life when the weather warms and the soil becomes moist.
- The largest representative among Lepidoptera is Agrippa (Tizania). The butterfly, whose wingspan is 30 cm, belongs to the moth family and lives in Latin America. The second record holder in the “largest” category is Queen Alexandra’s Birdwing.
- The smallest butterfly, Acetosea, has a wingspan of only 2 mm.. You can see these nocturnal babies in the UK. The reticuloses that live on the Canary Islands are just a little short of the title of “smallest butterflies”.
- Living to the fullest seems like it life motto ephemeris or mayfly butterflies. In one day, these insects manage to be born, leave offspring and die. Such butterflies do not need to look for food, since digestive organs they are filled with air.
- The most poisonous spider, according to the compilers of the popular collection of the Guinness Book of Records, is the “Brazilian wanderer”. The insect received its nickname for its excessive activity.
- There are cannibals among spiders. A clear confirmation of this is the black widow, which lives in Eurasia, Australia and Oceania. After mating, the female of this species devours the smaller male, as she spends a lot of energy during the mating season.
- The largest spider on Earth is considered to be the Goliath tarantula (Teraphosa blond). The insect lives in the tropics Latin America, eats small snakes, mice, frogs and lizards. The size of the body with straightened legs is 25–28 cm.
- Ants are one of the oldest insects on the planet.. Their age is 100–130 million years. It is also interesting that having survived to this day, they have practically not changed in appearance. The reason for this adaptability, according to scientists, lies in the social way of life.
- Some of the ants not only hunt, but also engage in cattle breeding. Herding ants “graze” scale insects, leafhoppers, aphids, and keep homoptera in “stalls.” The reward for their labors is the sweet excrement of “cattle” that goes into food.
- The main occupation of Amazon ants is wars, during which they capture the pupae of strangers. The captives are then used as slaves. The militants themselves are not able to feed themselves, since they cannot organize their daily life.
- Not only spiders are poisonous, but also caterpillars. The most dangerous butterfly larva is Lonomia, which lives in American tropical forests. She has a calm disposition and inconspicuous coloring, but the spines on the caterpillar’s body contain a strong toxin that acts as an anticoagulant.
- A stunning example of survivability - a cockroach. With his head severed, he can live for weeks. To respond to touch and move, the insect does not need a brain. Instead, the basic reflex functions are performed by clusters of nervous tissue in the body.
- The most voracious insect in the world - desert locusts. This pest, which lives in Asia and Africa, eats as much as it weighs every day. A flock of 50 million individuals per day destroys food that would be enough for 1 thousand people for six months.
