Insect Behavior

Insect behavior, for the most part, is hereditary, and responses to stimuli are mostly automatic or instinctive. Direct responses (moving toward or away from the stimuli) may be made in reaction to light, temperature, water, contact, gravity, or currents of air or water. Often a response to a stimulus can be modified by other stimuli, as well as by the insect's physiology, food, and state of development. Some behavior involves a series of different acts. Such complex behavior includes nest building and mating. While this behavior may appear intelligent, it is usually found to be instinctive. Because insects can be taught to modify their behavior, however, it is believed that they have a limited capacity to learn. Examples include the ant that can learn a maze and the honeybee that finds its way home be recognizing landmarks.

Social behavior

Many insects occur in groups, each group differing in the factors that bring the individuals together. Often the aggregation result from a mutual attraction to the same stimulus, such as food supply. Ants, terminates, and some bees live in more integrated groups, called societies. The insect society works as a unit despite the large number of individuals. One distinct feature is the division of labor.

Auditory behavior

Sound plays an important role in insect behavior. Only a few sounds produced by insects are heard by human, because these sounds are either too low or too high pitched. Sound produced in several ways. Rubbing one body part against another, called stridulation, any involve almost any part of the body, in various species. Some insects vibrate special membranes called tymbols, as in the leafhoppers. A few insects will strike a part of their body on the substrate, for example, some grasshoppers use their feet. The principle role played by sound is in mating.

Defenses

Most insects try to escape when threatened and some insects "play dead." For example, some beetle fall to the ground after folding up their legs, giving the appearance of a clump of dirt. Many insects use shelters ranging from burrows in the ground to elaborate shelters constructed of various materials. Insects also employ camouflage. Many are so colored that they blend into their background. Chemical defenses often involve distasteful body secretion, repellent secretions, or poisonous injection into an attacker. The use of sting is probably the most effective and often a severe method.

Insect

Insect are members of the phylum Arthropoda, class Insecta, the largest and most diverse class in the animal kingdom. Insect have three body divisions; head, thorax, and abdomen; and six legs borne as an adult. Because of their small size, ability to fly, rapid reproductive rate, and external skeleton, insect are highly successful animals that have exploited every habitat except the polar ice caps. The external skeleton is coated with a waxy layer that helps insect converse body moisture. The small size of insects aids in their dispersal to more favorable habitats. Thrips and aphids are carried by frontal systems for long distances. Small insects have been collected by airplane at 3,000 m (10,000 ft). Migratory butterflies and locusts may fly hundreds of kilometers in a few weeks.

Insect display almost every color, from drab, dull brown and black, to iridescent blues, and reds, and purples, to the metallic greens, blues, yellow and reds of some Wasps and Bees. Sizes vary from tiny mymarid wasps less than 1 mm (0.04 in) long to huge beetles or slender walking sticks up to 30 cm (12 in) long. Shape is equally variable. For example, legs may be adapted for walking, jumping, running, clinging to hairs, swimming, spinning silk, carrying pollen, hearing, or they may be absent.

Feeding and Digestion

Insects obtain food by a variety of methods, including biting, lapping and sucking. Carnivorous insects such as the praying mantis catch and chew their prey. Some wasps paralyze their prey with veronomous stings, lay their eggs in the bodies, and provide a living food supply for their young. Termittes are able to digest and receive nourishment from wood because tiny protozoan within their digestive system "predigest" the cellulose in the wood.

The digestive system is essentially a tube that begins with the mouth and is divided into a pharynx; esophagus; crop, stomach (midgut), and intestine (hindgut); colon and rectum. The midgut has glandular outgrowths, the gastric ceca, which secrete digestive juices. The Malpighian tubes remove nitrogenous waste from the blood; the blind tubes empty into the hindgut.

Gull

Gull are approximately 43 species of birds belonging to the family Laridae, which includes the Terns. They are uniform in size and coloration and range from about 28 to 81 cm (11 to 32 in) in length. Most have a gray or white mantle, some are black above (the blacked and kelp gulls) and white below. Adult are several species have a black or brown hood. The bill is stout and hooked, the feet, except for the free hind toe, is fully webbed.

Gulls are mainly scavengers and prey on anything they can find, sometimes far inland. They forage along ocean and inland shores, when they pick up dead animal matter or catch fish in shallow waters. In some areas they are known to carry hard-shelled molusks aloft and drop from on pavements or rocks to break the shell. Some species rob smaller birds of their catches, and gulls often gang up on wounded larger birds. Some species, such as the ring billed, Bonaparte's and Franklin's gulls, may follow a plow for upturned grubs or visit grain fields for insects, mice, and other prey.

Gulls usually nest in colonies on islands. Two or three eggs are laid in a shallow nest composed of stones, shells seaweed, or stalks of vegetation. Incubation periods vary from 20 to 30 days, and the young, sparsely clothed with natal down, remain at or near the nest for several days before wandering off. Mortality is high in the nesting colonies, but survivors may live up to 30 years or more. The birds have been favorite subjects for behavior studies, and their movements and migrations are well known.

The great black-backed gull (left) is often seen with smaller and more common herring gull (center), which often breaks the shells of clam and other mollusks by dropping them on rocks or paved areas. Fanklin's gull (right), found inland in freshwater habitats, feeds on insects and other prey in plowed fields.

Fly and Diseases

Some of the most serious diseases among humans is Dengue Fever, viral encephalitis, filariasis, malaria, and yellow fever, that is transmitted by mosquitoes. Many hundreds of thousands of people living along Africa's river are permanently blinded by small roundworms introduced by the bite of the black-fly.

In much of the world to day, poor sanitation, domestic flies, and intestinal diseases are constant and related problems. In Latin America, Africa and India, blowflies and houseflies are especially abundant; they shuttle between faces and human food, carrying the agents of cholera, dysentery, diarrhea disease, and gastroenteritis. Some species prefer the eye and transfer the microbes of pinkeye, conjunctivitis, and trachoma from diseased to healthy eyes; others spread yaws, a skin disease, when they feed on cuts and stores.

Some adult flies are harmless but deposit their eggs in wounds or body openings of livestock and humans. The larval flies, or maggots, consume living tissue, and the wound enlarges as more females are attracted to the site for oviposition. Such maggot infestations are called myiasis. Agricultural crops, such as wheat and onions, are also attacked.

Beneficial Roles

Beneficial activities of flies include pollination, the reduction and recycling of plant and animals wastes, and the unique contributions of the fruit fly, Drosophila, to genetics and our understanding of heredity. In 1930s, before the advent of antibiotics and sulfa drugs, doctors cured stubborn cases of osteomyelitis with sterile blowfly maggots. The maggots ate only the dead and decaying tissue, cleaning out the wound, suppressing harmful bacteria with their secretions, and encouraging growth of healthy tissue.

Fly

Fly is the common name for insects of the order Diptera, or true flies, which includes the small Housefly, Fruit fly, Mosquito, gnat, midge, blowfly and botfly, and the nearly 2.5 cm long (1 in) Deerfly, Horsefly and crane fly.

The term fly is applied to such non-diptera as the butterfly, dragonfly, mayfly and stone fly. Unlike these and other insects, true flies have a single pair of membranous fore-wings, with knob-shaped vestigial wings instead of hind wings. The vestigial wings, called halteres, are used as balancing organs.

The mouthparts are specialized for lapping or sucking in some flies and for piecing and sucking in others. Almost all species have antennae and large compound eyes. A network of thick veins strengthens the wings; the pattern of these venations is used for identification and classification. One theory is that the veins evolve from tracheae, a system of tubes common in insects that supplies oxygen to the tissues.

All files develop through metamorphosis in four stages, egg, larva, pupa, and adult. The larvae, called maggots, lack eyes, legs, wings, antennae, and distinct mouthparts and body regions. The pupa is defenseless but generally in soil or heaps of waste.

The life cycle of a housefly is typical of all true flies and consists of four stages, egg, larva, pupa, and adult. An adult female lays 100 to 160 eggs at a time, usually in decaying organic matter. Each egg, 1 mm (0.04 in) long, hatches into a larva in 12 to 24 hours. After several days the larva changes into a pupa, which is encased in a tough shell. In 3 to 5 days a full-sized adult fly emerges. During warm weather, it will live about 1 month.

Mosquito

Mosquitoes are small, delicate, two-winged flies, the adult females of which are pests to humans and many other animals because they feed on blood. Because of this habit several species serve as carries of disease such as malaria, filariasis, dog heathworm, arboviral encephaitis, and yellow fever.

Mosquitoes can be distinguished from other true flies by an elongated sucking proboscis and scales along the wing veins and on the body. The scales vary in color and arrangement, giving each species a characteristic appearance. The species belong to the insect order Diptera, family Culicidae. The more than 2600 species are divided into 31 or more genera, 12 of which are found in the United States. Mosquitoes are distributed worldwide in all but the most extreme habitats.

Mosquitoes pass through four stages; egg, larva, pupa, and adult. Mosquito larva can live in water, and they usually feed on micro plankton. They move by wiggling their bodies, hence they common name "wiggler", and by the waving motion of their mouth brushes. Larvas are transformed into adults during the comparatively brief, non feeding pupal stage. Unlike most other insects, mosquito pupae are active, diving in response to potentially threatening stimuli. Most breathe at the water's surface by means of respiratory tubes or "trumpets." Adults emerge at the water's surface.

Only female are blood feeders, although both males and females feed on flower nectar. Most females require a blood meal to produce a batch of eggs. A mosquito may be attracted to its victim by warmth, odor, moisture and even carbon dioxide. Using carbon dioxide gradients, the mosquito may be able to follow a sleeping person's breath to its source.

The mosquito's mouthparts consist of two pairs of needlelike maxillae and mandibles; a food channel, which sucks up the blood or nectar, a saliva channel, and a sheath. When a mosquito bites, it first inserts the pointed, barbed pair of maxilae, which achor the mouthparts in the skin and provide leverage for the insertion of the remaining four parts. The sheath slides back as the other mouthparts pass through its tip. The mosquito's saliva, which contains anticoagulants to stop the blood from clotting, is injected into the skin, causing the area around the bite to swell and itch.

Mosquito control is effected in several ways, including draining breeding areas. Applying thin oil to water to kill the larvae, spraying with insecticides, and employing biological agents, such as small fishes that eat mosquito larvae. The incidence of mosquito-borne disease, however, is increasing rapidly. The tiger mosquito, Aedes albopicus, unlike other mosquitoes, is able to carry many disease-causing viruses. Native to Asia, it is now also found in United States.

Many kind of mosquito can transfer diseases to human, usually diseases that caused by virus. Many diseases can be transferred by mosquito like dengue fever, malaria, westnile diseases, cikungunya as in Indonesia and many others.

Quetzal

One of the most beautiful birds in the world, the quetzal, Pharomachrus mocino, lives in humid mountain forests of southern Mexico and Central America. It is a member of the trogon family, Trogonidae.

The male is bright metallic green with golden high-light above and scarlet below, with the underside of the tail being white. Males measure about 38 cm (15 in) in length and beyond the end of the tail have a magnificent train of long green feathers that extends another 38 to 76 cm (15 to 30 in). These are not tail feathers; rather, they are elongated upper tail covers. In the duller colored female, this train of feathers is short. The quetzal figured prominently in the art mythology of cultures of the region.

The quetzal, a Central American bird of great beauty, is the national bird of Guatemala. Aztecs and Mayans regarded the quetzal as sacred, plucking tail plumes from living male birds for ceremonial purpose.

Przewalski's Horse

Przewalski’s horse, Equus przewalskii, is the last surviving subspecies of the wild true Horse. Remaining known speciments exist in zoos. The horse resembles a heavy-boned pony, standing about 12-14 hands (122-142 cm/48-56 in) tall. Its coat is reddish tan, a long face, and a strong lower jaw. It was discovered and identified near the Altai Mountains of Central Asia by Russian explorer Nikolai Prxhevalsky(1839-88) about 1879. It has changed little since the time of its prehistoric depiction on cave walls in France and Spain.

Przewalski’s wild horse was depicted in paintings and sculpture by early Stone Age humans. This horse is cautious near people; a stallion will warm his mares away from farm or towns.

Quarter Horse

The quarter horse is thought to have originated in the mid- to late 1600s in the American colonies of Virginia and the Carolinas. It was used for racing on straight quarter-mile (400 m) tracks, from which it derives its name. At such a short distance, equal to 2 furlongs, fast starts and the ability to reach to speed quickly are of great advantage, and the first quarter horses were bred with these points in mind. Bred probably from local native stock and thoroughbred as well, the quarter horse was developed with a relatively short body; broad, muscular, hindquarters; strong, sloping shoulders; and southwestern United States on castle ranches, where its quick starting, stopping, and turning made it valuable as a cow pony.

Quarter horses may be any solid color, as well as buck skin, smoky, and palomino, but paints or pintos are not permissible. Quarter horses generally range in size from 14-2 to 15-2 hands high (147 to 157 cm /58 to 62 in).

Pelican

Pelican is the common name for the large aquatic birds of the family Pelecanidae, which reach 180 cm (72 in) in length. They have long necks, short tails, long, broad wings, and huge with deeply expansible skin pouches in the lower mandible; the upper mandible serves as a lid for covering the pouch. Widely distributed, predominantly over the warmer regions of the world, pelicans are strong fliers and swimmers, feeding on fish and crustaceans captured by diving into the water from the air or while swimming on the surface. They are sociable animals, often nesting in colonies of up to several thousand birds. Females produce two to three plain, bluish or yellowish eggs, although usually only one eggs survives the 30 to 42 day incubation period. The young are born naked, and plumage appears after 8 to 14 days. Sexual maturity after the third of fourth year.

The brown pelican dives from a great height, striking the water with an enormous impact. The bird is approximately 130 cm (150 in). It is dive by air pockets that line fresh beneath its breast.

The old World white pelican of southeastern Europe, Asia, and Africa is found near lakes, marshes, and streams. It is approximately 170 cm (67 in) long. In flight, a line of pelicans may move as choreographed dancers, beating their wings, gliding, and dipping in unison. Pelican also hunt cooperatively.

Cat Health

A cat's normal temperature is about 38.6 ^oC (101,5 ^oF). The critical environmental temperature is about 36 ^oC (97 ^oF), at which point a cat begin to pant to cool itself. Sweat glands exist in the pads of the feet and scattered over the body, but sweating is not a temperature regualating mechanism in cats.

One leading cause of death in domestic cats is feline leukemia, a cat specific viral disease. The virus can cause fatal tumors in almost all tissues and organs of the body. It also impairs the animal's immune system, leaving it prone to other serious infections and conditions. The virus (FeLV), a retrovirus, is transmitted by contact with infected cats and excrement. A vaccine against feline leukemia is available.

Another retrovirus that causes disease in cats is feline T-lymphotropic lentivirus (FTLV). Identified in 1987, the disease also attacks the immune system; infected cats exhibit numerous infections, lose weight, and waste away.

Feline distemper is a highly contagious viral disease, also transmitted by raccoons and weasels. The virus, a parvovirus, is transmitted by even brief contact with contaminated material and death may occur as soon as eight hours after the first sign of illness appear. A vaccine is available.

Feline viral rhinotrachetis, or cat flu, is not contagious to human or other animals. An infected cat develop a fever, begins sneezing and drooling, and becomes lethargic. This is followed by a heavy discharge from the eyes and nose. Treatment consist of antibiotics, cleaning the eyes and nose, and administering fluid.

Cats are also susceptible to flea and roundworm infestations. Treatment exist on both problems. Cats that roam outside the house can bring in parasites and transfer them and the diseases they may carry to humans. A few appear serious; cases of brucellosis and, extremely rarely, of plague have been reported. Pregnant women are cautioned about handling cats and their litter boxes because of the possibility of transfering Toxoplasmosis to their fetuses. Some people exhibit a severe allergic reaction to cats, most likely, it has been suggested, to dried spittle on their fur.