Category Plants & Animals

What is the difference between a moth and a butterfly?

Butterflies are often brightly coloured. They fly during the day and their antennae have rounded ends. Moths have feathery antennae, and fly at night.

Which butterfly can fly thousands of kilometres?

The American monarch butterfly lives in the United States and Canada. When autumn approaches, thousands travel south to Florida, California and Mexico – a journey of over 3,000 kilometres.

Is it true? Butterflies and moths have scales.

Yes. Butterflies and moths have four wings covered with tiny overlapping scales which shimmer in the light. These scales give them their bold patterns and beautiful colours.

Amazing! Before laying eggs, butterflies test food plants with their antennae and tongues to check that the leaves are suitable for their caterpillars. But some also stamp on the leaves, because butterflies, flies and honeybees have taste organs in their feet!

How do caterpillars become butterflies?

When a caterpillar is fully grown, it turns into a pupa. Inside the pupa case the caterpillar’s body breaks down and gradually becomes a butterfly. This change is called metamorphosis.

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Are spiders insects?

No. Spiders belong to a group called arachnids, which also includes scorpions, mites and ticks. Spiders all have eight legs, one pair more than insects. They have two body parts – a head and an abdomen – and most have eight simple eyes.

Is it true? Spiders and insects have bones.

No. Instead they all have a hard casing on the outside called an exoskeleton. This protects their soft insides like a suit of armour and gives them their shape. They have to replace this casing with a new one in order to grow.

Amazing! There are creepy-crawlies living just about everywhere in the world, under water, in caves, down deep holes and even on the tops of mountains. Most of the animals in the world are insects. They make up 85% of all known animal species and there are probably millions more waiting to be discovered!

What makes an insect an insect?

Although they may look different from one another, every adult insect has six legs and three parts to its body. The head is at the front, the thorax in the middle and the abdomen at the back. Many insects have wings for flying and long feelers or antennae.

What is a minibeast?

Creepy-crawlies can also be called minibeasts. You will find other kinds of minibeasts, which are related to spiders and insects, such as woodlice, slugs, snails, worms, centipedes and millipedes.

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Why do spiders spin webs?

Sticky webs can be a home and a trap to catch flying insects. But not all spiders make webs, and not all webs are the same. The ogre-eyed spider makes a web like a net. It hangs down holding the web, waiting to throw it over its prey.

Do spiders have teeth?

No, but they have fangs for stabbing prey and injecting it with poison and special juices. The victims turn to liquid inside so that the spider can then suck them up like soup!

Amazing! The water spider makes its home under the surface of the water. It spins a web like a balloon which it fills with air bubbles. It waits inside until it spots its prey, and then darts out to seize it.

Is it true? Some spiders eat their webs.

Yes. Orb web spiders eat the old web before they spin a new one. A web may take an hour to spin. The silk is as strong as steel of the same thickness.

What can see with its tail?

As well as a sting, some scorpions also have light-sensitive cells in their tails. These cells let them know whether it’s day or night, even when their heads are underground. Scorpions hunt at night and spend the day hidden in their burrows.

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A caterpillar or worm? Can you tell the difference?

It’s easy to think caterpillars and worms are the same. After all, they’re both usually slow-moving, and long and squiggly with the caterpillars even have the word worm in their name, adding to the confusion. But while they have a few similarities, caterpillars and worms are basically different creatures.

Similarities

Both caterpillars and worms can be pests or friends of humans and the environment. For instance, both can destroy plants (earthworms can eat the roots of a healthy plant, and caterpillars can polish off large quantities of leaves) but they are also food for larger creatures. While worms help with composting, butterflies and moths emerging from caterpillars help in the pollination of plants, many of which produce food for several creatures and humans.

The difference

Caterpillars are the larvae of butterflies or moths. Essentially, they are just a stage in the life cycle of an insect. Worms, on the other hand, are not a phase; they are tubular invertebrates. One of the most notable differences between the two is that worms do not have legs; caterpillars usually have three pairs of legs. Worms also normally do not have eyes. Instead, they have what are called receptors that help them sense if there’s light or darkness. Also, while worms seem to prefer areas that are dark and moist, caterpillars do not appear to be picky in that department.

Here’s a trivia coming your way. The fall armyworm, which has been getting a lot of attention for its large-scale destruction of crops in India, is not a worm at all. It is actually the larva of the fall armyworm moth!

 

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Do animals laugh?

Laughter is the instinctive expression of amusement. We laugh by making sounds and movements of the face. Laughter is rhythmic, often audible contractions of the diaphragm and other parts of the respiratory system. To answer the question “Do animals laugh?”, animals such as chimpanzees, gorillas, bonobos, orangutans, rats, dogs and dolphins display behavior that is similar to laughter.

In 2009 Marina Davila Ross, a psychologist at the U.K.’s University of Portsmouth, conducted experiments in which she tickled infant and juvenile primates such as orangutans, gorillas, and chimpanzees. The apes responded by painting distinctively, which scientists say could be similar to laughing in humans. Their laughter is not readily recognizable to humans as such, because it is generated by alternating inhalations and exhalations that sound more like panting.

Apes may also have a good sense of humour. Koko, a gorilla at The Gorilla Foundation, in Woodside, California, who was trained in sign language, once tied her trainer’s shoelaces together and signed to her to chase.

Dogs sometimes pant in a manner that sounds like a human laugh, while rats emit long ultrasonic calls while playing and when tickled.

In 2004, researchers studying dolphins noticed a particular set of sounds – a short burst of pulses, followed by a whistle, made by them during play-fighting.

 

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How wood frogs freeze?

Wood frogs inhabit parts of the U.S., Canada and the Arctic Circle which means, they must be prepared to deal with sub-zero temperatures. While different animals do different things – such as burrowing underground and migrating to warmer places – to escape the cold, creatures such as wood frogs embrace it – they simple freeze! Let’s see how they do it.

They become frogcicles!

When winter arrives and the first ice crystals fall on this freeze-tolerant frog’s skin, the frog begins to freeze. As this happens, the liver starts to produce large quantities of glucose. Once this glucose is released from the liver, it mixes with the bloodstream and is carried throughout the body through the pumping of the heart. Research says urea – produced by the frog’s urine – also blends with the glucose. This mixture helps prevent the cells from freezing completely, because that would mean the death of the frog. Only about 70% of its body fluid freezes. Meanwhile, the frog stops breathing, its heart too stops beating, and organs become inactive. The frog hardens – this is offhandedly referred to as a frogcicle, drawing from the word icicle. The creature is motionless and appears dead. This continues through the winter. While the role of glucose in keeping it alive when it is frozen has been understood, it is still not clear what causes the stopping of a beating heart. As for the frog, when Spring arrives, it begins to thaw, regains consciousness and recovers from its state within a day. And, life goes on – with a freeze-thaw cycle in place.

 

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