text/Xia Xiaoyou
The season of eating watermelon has arrived again. The air conditioner is blowing and eating watermelon. This is probably what summer should be like. However, recently, my child has a little trouble because of eating watermelon.
What happened was like this. One day after dinner, she was watching cartoons and digging watermelon. She ate happily. I don’t remember how long it took. Suddenly, she dropped the spoon and ran away to the sofa, laughing loudly. Called: "Mom, there are ants ! Get them away quickly!" I looked in the direction of her finger and saw only a few ants looking for the ground, and there was a long team behind, and there were vaguely ants going towards it. We're crawling here.
I took a paper towel and wiped it on the ground. Sure enough, I found several drops of watermelon juice on the ground. I smelled the sweet and greasy watermelon juice. Can there be no ants? I told the child: "You ate the watermelon juice on the ground, that's why there are ants. Be careful next time, otherwise there will be more. Are you afraid?"
She nodded quickly, and then asked in confusion: "Do ants also like to eat sweet things? But how can they smell watermelon juice in our house? They don't live in our house, so how can they smell it with their noses? Are ant noses worse than dog noses?" This question, I really couldn't answer it for the moment, but there are scientific answers in "'s Big Book of Incredible Insects".
The author of this book, Bart Russell, is a famous bioengineer, entrepreneur and inventor in the Netherlands; the illustrator is Medi Oberndorf, who graduated from Maastricht University School of Art and Design, obtained a master's degree in scientific illustration. So far, she has published 4 children's books. "Doug's Cabin" she illustrated was named the "Beautiful Book" of the Netherlands in 2019.
Open "The Incredible Big Book of Insects" and you will explore the classification, morphology, defense capabilities, and predatory techniques of insects from an unexpected perspective. Moreover, whether you know or are familiar with these insects, you can get to know them again in the illustrations.
The book introduces that ants cannot speak and their auditory system is not well developed. They communicate information by touching each other with their tentacles. More importantly, when they want to convey information, their bodies will emit a special smell. By following this smell, the ants can mark a route leading to the food and let their companions find it along the route.
Ants have a sweet tooth, and their love for sugar has reached the point of obsession. Therefore, let alone watermelon juice, even a little bit of sweetness can attract ants. The book mentions that in order to get sweets, ants will not hesitate to protect aphids and take care of their young because aphids secrete a sweet honeydew. Almost all aphids and ants have sweet deals. .
Isn’t it incredible that insects as small as this size can actually know how to barter like humans? In fact, there are many incredible things about insects. is like cicadas. We all know that cicadas chirp very noisily in midsummer, but do you know why they chirp?
It turns out that birds are the natural enemies of cicadas. If you are not careful, cicadas will be eaten by birds. In order to drive away the birds, they have to make noisy noises. Their noise can reach up to 120 decibels, which is equivalent to a loudspeaker The roar of an airplane taking off, or the sound of a cutting machine working, has long been beyond the hearing range of birds and humans, and can play a good protective role.
What’s even more amazing is that the cicada’s own hearing is not affected at all by such a loud noise. Why is this? It turns out that the cicada's tympanum is connected to its hearing organ through a membrane. Whenever the drum starts to sound, its hearing organ will automatically close up. Are there any good chicken thieves?
Of course, in the world of insects, there are not only normal events such as ants foraging and cicadas protecting themselves. Things like deception, disguise, and mutual harm also occur from time to time. For example, there is an insect called Caoling. In the larval stage, they specialize in eating aphids, but the aphids are protected by ants. What should we do?
The clever Caoling larvae will specifically pick out the aphids that are alone. Before eating, they will first peel off the white flakes on the aphids. Why do they do this? It turns out that the cunning Caoling larvae will wear this white wool, disguise themselves as aphids, and sneak into the aphid team. In this way, if the ants are not paying attention, they can feast on the aphids and catch them all in one go! I have to say, this person is so thoughtful!
By the way, another very annoying thing in summer is that cockroaches tend to appear in the house! But did you know that there is an insect in this world that specializes in eating cockroaches? However, the process of eating cockroaches is really a bit scary. If any cockroach is unfortunate enough to witness the same kind of experience, it will tremble and have nightmares every day. Bar.
"The Big Book of Incredible Insects" really lives up to the title. The knowledge about insects mentioned in it is all so incredible, whether it is the familiar ants, cicadas, butterflies, caterpillars, cockroaches, fireflies , still unfamiliar with Caoling, ant lion , green long-backed mud wasp, blowfly ... nearly a hundred kinds of wonderful insects, their stories are so amazing!
