Venus Flytraps Are Even Creepier Than We Thought

theexoticvet:

If you accidentally get transformed into a fly, and get caught in a Venus flytrap, here is some valuable advice: Don’t panic.

“If you just sit there and wait, the next morning, the trap will open and you can leave,” says Ranier Hedrich from the University of Würzburg. “It you panic, you induce a deadly cycle of disintegration.”

Hedrich and others have found that the Venus flytrap can count the number of times that its victims touch the sensory hairs on its leaves. One touch does nothing. Two closes the trap. Three primes the trap for digestion. And five, according to Hedrich’s latest study, triggers the production of digestive enzymes—and more touches mean more enzymes. The plant apportions its digestive efforts according to the struggles of its prey. And the fly, by fighting for its life, tells the plant to start killing it, and how vigorously to do so.

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(via moreanimalia)

Source: theexoticvet

Q:Fairly sure the spider you found is a brown recluse... They are highly venomous and their bite can really harm you! Get rid of it ASAP.

Anonymous

rotifers:

jennrosefx:

scalestails:

I am 100% sure that she is not a brown recluse, or even related to a brown recluse!

The misidentification of spiders is so common, and the misinformation spread about them by the media, hearsay, etc. all ends up with so many innocent spiders- who are totally harmless to humans and pets, being killed on the spot.

Unless you are an entomologist, keep spiders as a hobby, or have a special interest in spiders and their biology, you will probably be 100% wrong 100% of the time if you try to identify a spider.

Superficially, many spiders look the same. Similar colors, patterns, and they all have 8 legs right? But if you look closer there are many, many subtle signs that tell the species apart.

Leg shape, size, and how they hold them. Size of the cephalathorax relative to the abdomen can indicate gender as well as species. The size, shape, and arrangement of the eyes (which can sometimes only be seen with the help of a magnifying glass!). Where the spider was found is another helpful indicator.

So there are all these subtle things to help you identify a species, and unless you are really into spiders like I said… you’re probably wrong.

And I’d really like to address this whole “brown recluses are highly venomous” thing. Yes, their venom is hemotoxic. But bites that actually cause any medical symptoms are rare (yes, you can be bitten and NEVER KNOW IT) and ones that do actually tend to heal by themselves in a few days.  And over 80% of problems that medical doctors diagnose as “brown recluse bites” are actually something else. Staph infections, herpes, lyme disease, etc. are all misdiagnosed by actually doctors as brown recluse bites, sometimes despite brown recluses not even living in that state (looking at you, California).

Most bites from brown recluse spiders (Loxosceles reclusa) are “dry” bites, meaning they don’t inject venom. Venom takes energy to create, and a spider might not want to spend energy creating more venom when they can just run away. Which they will try to do. They are not a particularly aggressive or defensive spider, and rarely bite humans. If they do, it is because they are pushed against the skin and feel threatened. And even then, they aren’t likely to inject any venom at all.

There was literally a woman who lived in a house with over 2,000 brown recluse spiders and no one in the house ever got bitten… 

I’m not saying that no one has been harmed by them, I’m just saying that their danger has been greatly exaggerated by pretty much everybody.

SO onto my spider! I was looking around at work and now that I’m home I’m not 100% sure because the species I think she is is pretty variable with their pattern, but I’m almost certain that she is Pisaurina mira, a species of Nursery Web Spider. Why do I know for a fact that she isn’t a brown recluse and most likely a Pisaurina sp.? Because of her eyes!

These are the eyes of Loxosceles reclusa. There are three pairs of eyes, with 6 eyes total.

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My spider has 8 eyes, in two rows. Unfortunately there is a peice of coco coir in front of half her face of the first picture, but you can clearly see there are not three pairs, and in the second photo you can see the entire top row.

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And even just looking at the spider itself, they are pretty different in shape and pattern!

Loxosceles:

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(Image source)

My spider

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So please, read this article about the brown recluse spider and look them up from reputable experts! They don’t deserve the bad rap they get, and so many other spiders also suffer from being misidentified.

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I’d kind of want to live in a house with 2,000 brown recluse spiders. Maybe black widows too. They’d be a great way to scare off door-to-door salespeople!

Source: scalestails

ihomestuckguy:

why-animals-do-the-thing:

polychora:

Video by Alix Harvey, head aquarist at the Marine Biological Association of the UK

“Common cuttlefish, Sepia officinalis, striking at 120fps”

Cuttlefish have ten tentacles - eight normal ones, and two longer that function (as seen here) as striking weapons to grab and ensnare prey. 

@violetsealover

(via monere-lluvia)

Source: twitter.com

volk-morya: “ Study of crabs suggests they are capable of feeling pain “ A pair of researchers with Queen’s University in the U.K. has found via testing, that contrary to conventional thinking, crabs appear to be capable of feeling pain. In their...
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volk-morya:

Study of crabs suggests they are capable of feeling pain

A pair of researchers with Queen’s University in the U.K. has found via testing, that contrary to conventional thinking, crabs appear to be capable of feeling pain. In their paper published in the journal Biology Letters, Robert Elwood and Laura Adams describe how they subjected a group of crabs to jolts of electricity and the ways they tested them to see if the shocks elicited a pain response.

In humans and a host of other vertebrates, demonstrations of pain are obvious, from cries and moans to activities related to escape to avoidance behavior afterwards. But do invertebrates and/or fish feel pain? It is a reasonable question because of the way that some invertebrates are treated by humans—dunking them, while still alive, into a pot of boiling water, for instance. Doing so to a cow, pig or chicken would be unthinkable, yet it is done routinely with crabs and lobsters, which do generally attempt to escape their fate. The conventional view is that such creatures are not able to experience pain, at least in the sense that humans feel it, because they do not have brain parts that would appear to be able to process it. But, that may be oversimplifying things—to better define if a creature experiences pain, scientists have begun to establish rules or guidelines to help, such as noting types or degree of reactionary behavior or changes in hormone levels—if such guidelines are met, the creature can be said to feel pain, in whatever form.

In this new study, Elwood and Adams set out to determine if common crabs experience pain. To find out they obtained 40 specimens and put them in plastic tanks—all had wires attached but only 20 were actually given shocks—for 200-milliseconds every 10 seconds for a two minute period. All of the crabs were watched to observe their behavior, before, during and after the shocks were applied.

The researchers report that the shocked crabs displayed more vigorous behavior than those in the control group, which included walking around, taking a threatened posture or trying to climb out of the tank. Even more tellingly, they noted that the shocked crabs experienced spiked levels of lactic acid in their haemolymph—a fluid in crabs that is analogous to blood in humans.

Taken together the evidence indicates very clearly, the team claims, that crabs do indeed feel pain.

Text credit: Bob Yirka

Image credit: Taylor Spaulding

(via moreanimalia)

Source: Flickr / spudjnr123

nirdian: “ ladynovelist: “ The most British PSA you’ll ever read ” And also completely wrong in every way. The Bee: • Not a bee but a bumblebee. • Lives in small colonies (15-20 workers). • Doesn’t produce more honey than is needed for offspring. •...
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nirdian:

ladynovelist:

The most British PSA you’ll ever read

And also completely wrong in every way.

The Bee:

  • Not a bee but a bumblebee.
  • Lives in small colonies (15-20 workers).
  • Doesn’t produce more honey than is needed for offspring.
  • Doesn’t sting at all.

The actual bee:

  • Bees don’t die out of courtesy when they sting, they make sure that whatever they sting stays the fuck away from any bees in the future by leaving the stinger and poison glands behind inside the attacker to keep pumping poison. Also makes sure that the bee only stings if absolutely necessary for the survival of its brethren of the hive.
  • Does not give a toss what you think about it’s “job”.
  • Very endangered. Protect at all costs. Plant ALL THE FLOWERS! Everywhere!
  • Buzzing is a side-effect of staying afloat through magic.

The Wasp:

  • Cleaner. Keeps pests and carrion away by feeding it all to their larvae, or otherwise dispose of it. These guys keep all the other, actually harmful, crawlies at bay.
  • Does bugger all if you don’t fuckin’ sit on them or panic when they go near your jam-crusted lips that smell like high-sucrose liquids that’s their only sustenance. Just wave at them and they’ll buzz off. Or place a jam-filled whatever away from you or something. They’re smart enough to go for that instead of near the giant angry pink mountains of flesh that might kill them.
  • WILL EAT ALL OF YOUR WOODEN FURNITURE! They make their nests out of paper. And unless you want hundreds of lovely straight lines on all of your wooden stuff, treat that shit with something or cover it up when not using it.

(via nirdian)

Source: welightcandlesinthedark

arcanebarrage: “ cutebiology: “ malformalady: “ Festooning is a behavior where bees hold onto each other to create a scaffold while they build honeycombs. Photo credit: girlnextdoorhoney ” building a bridge to my heart more like ” Festooning,...
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arcanebarrage:

cutebiology:

malformalady:

Festooning is a behavior where bees hold onto each other to create a scaffold while they build honeycombs.

Photo credit: girlnextdoorhoney

building a bridge to my heart more like

Festooning, bearding, and air conditioning are some of the cutest things bees do. When you take frames out of busy lower supers, you will usually always get a bee “daisy chain” of festooners trying to keep you from tugging the frame out. 

The air conditioning is my favorite, though. You will see a little line of workers sitting at the front of the hive with their butts facing the entrance, and they will all start rapidly buzzing their wings. They’re blowing “cooler” air into the entrance to try and bring the hive temperature down so that the gals inside can work more efficiently. 

Apis mellifera is a wonderful insect. 

(via moreanimalia)

Q:When I was a child, I saw something that changed my mind about wasps forever. My dad was doing some cabin construction work and I was hanging out at the site. Some other guy had half-crushed a wasp with a hammer, but it was still alive. As I watched, a second wasp flew to its side, and stroked it -actually stroked it, with what I can I can only describe as tenderness - with its antennae until the injured wasp stopped moving and died. Then the second wasp flew away, and I did not see it again.

glumshoe

zooophagous:

bogleech:

She was probably trying to communicate with her sister, probably trying to tell her to come back to the nest or share information about the area, and was very confused by the distorted responses she was getting, likely mixed with scent-based distress signals.

When the responses stopped, she probably went home and told the others to be on alert for danger :(

I’m not anthropomorphizing a bit here. Social wasps groom one another, share a LOT of information, get stressed when separated from their close relatives, and they recognize one another visually, like we humans do, by the fact that every single one has a unique face, even in the same “hive:”


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I almost feel bad for my seemingly irreparable phobia of them now.

Source: bogleech