Do some insects believe in keeping slaves?
Yes, indeed a kind of ants called sanguinary ants, attack the
homes of other ants and take away their larvae. When they grow to become, ants,
the sanguinary ants force them to work as slaves, chewing food for their
masters!
Some of their kind of sanguinary ants send their queen into the
nests of other ants. If this queen can kill the queen of the raided
nest, she lays her eggs in the new nest. Those born from these eggs are then
raised by the slave ants. Eventually, the sanguinary ants replace the other
ants totally in their own nests!
Which is the biggest
insect in the world?
In South America, some of the beetles grow more than 5 ½ inches in
length, and one of the tropical-style-shaped insects is seen to grow more than
a foot in length. But the biggest and the heaviest insect on earth is the
African Goliath beetle. This grows up to six inches long and weighs over 200
gms! It has a deep red body, a black and white striped head, and a pair of
black ‘horns’ a quarter inch long.
Which is the smallest
insect in the world?
The ‘battledore-wing fairy fly’ – a kind of parasitic wasp
and the hairy-winged beetle are the smallest known insects-they are only 1/125
of an inch long-smaller than some unicellular animals. You could put many of
these on the head of the pin!
What is a sea horse?
A sea horse is not a real horse but a fish that does not swim
with its head in front and its tail behind like other fish. This unusual fish
is small in size from one to twelve inches and resembles a horse in shape. It
swims “standing up” gracefully with its head tall and its tail low.
The sea horse belongs to a class of sea animals called “true
fish”, and is as much a fish as the mackerel or shark. Its body is covered with
lard and bony rings.
There are almost fifty different kinds of sea horses. Much of
the time, the sea horses stay in one place, curling their tapered tails around a
piece of seaweed at the bottom of the water and waiting for food to come their
way. When it wants to move or swim, it lets go of the seaweed and moves its
small fins, gliding through the water in a vertical position.
How powerful is a sea
hedgehog?
Although rarely more than a foot long, a sea hedgehog can kill
a big shark.
The sea hedgehog looks very much like the land hedgehog (the
small insect-eating mammal with sharp spikes on its back for protection from
its enemies) and is a roundish sea creature related to the starfish. It too
has sharp spines which are used for protection against enemies.
When a shark swallows a sea hedgehog it swells up like a balloon inside the shark’s belly. The sharp spines pierce the shark’s stomach walls and rip a hole in it. The sea hedgehog can then swim out to safety through the hole, but the act leaves the shark badly injured, sometimes even dead.