Insects

Feeding Mosquitoes Diet Drugs Makes Them Stop Biting

The drugs—which block hunger signals in humans and the insects—keep the bugs from bloodsucking for a few days

Honey Bees Can Do Simple Math, After a Little Schooling

Researchers trained 14 bees to add and subtract by one, suggesting their tiny brains have found novel ways of doing complicated tasks

Gemologist Brian Berger purchased the Indonesian opal last year

Gemologist Finds Insect Entombed in Opal Rather Than Amber

The unusual specimen appears to contain an open-mouthed insect complete with 'fibrous structures extending from the appendages'

Beach primrose, Oenothera drummondii.

Flowers Sweeten Up When They Sense Bees Buzzing

A new study suggests plants can 'hear' the humming of nearby pollinators and increase their sugar content in response

Dragonflies Embark on an Epic, Multi-Generational Migration Each Year

Monarch butterflies aren't the only migratory marathoners in North America

From L to R: Gymnetis drogoni, Gymnetis rhaegali and Gymnetis viserioni

These New Beetle Species Are Named After the ‘Game of Thrones’ Dragons

Daenerys Targaryen's dragons—Drogon, Rhaegal and Viserion—provided the inspiration for these three beetles' new names

The mandibles of the Dracula ant, Mystrium camillae, are the fastest known moving animal appendages, snapping shut at speeds of up to 90 meters per second.

A Dracula Ant's Snapping Jaw Is the Fastest Known Appendage in the Animal Kingdom

A new study found that the ant can snap its mandibles at a speed of up to 200 miles per hour—5,000 times faster than the blink of an eye

Signals from other workers can tell ants when and where to fan out and search for food.

Ant Colonies Retain Memories That Outlast the Lifespans of Individuals

An ant colony can thrive for decades, changing its behavior based on past events even as individual ants die off every year or so

Researchers Create First-Ever Honey Bee Vaccine

The compound protects against the American foulbrood disease, but the same technique could lead to protection against other major pathogens

New Butterfly Species Named After 17th-Century Female Naturalist

Maria Sibylla Merian documented the lifecycles of moths and butterflies with unprecedented accuracy

Fruit Flies First Began Feeding on Our Fresh Produce About 10,000 Years Ago

It turns out the insects love marula fruit found in south-central Africa, which attracted them to human caves

Meet your new zombie overlord.

These Wasps Hijack Spiders' Brains And Make Them Do Their Bidding

Larvae of the newly discovered species in Ecuador hijacks the spider to build a super-tough incubation chamber

Lasius niger queen and worker ants each got their own individual two-dimensional barcode tags. The tags allowed researchers to track their movement in the colony.

Ants Take Sick Days, Too

A new study has found that when some members of the colony are exposed to pathogens, they spend less time in the nest

Brown Recluse Silk Is Stronger Than Steel Because It's Constructed Like a Cable

Thousands of nanotendrils come together to form the flat, super-strong spider silk

The skull-collecting ants use chemical mimicry, a behavior usually observed amongst parasitic species, to entrap prey

These Ants Immobilize Prey With Acid Then Drag Them Back to Nest for Dismemberment

Decapitated heads, dismembered limbs litter the floor of <i>Formica archboldi</i> nests

Heatwaves May Dramatically Reduce Insect Fertility

Sperm production dropped by nearly three-quarters among male beetles exposed to lab-induced temperature increases

A new study has found that moths like the Antherina suraka, pictured here, may use their scales to avoid detection by bats.

Deaf Moths May Use Their ‘Fur’ To Avoid Hungry Bats

Fur-like scales on the insects’ thoraxes absorb the echoes of bat calls, according to new research

A platypus living in the most contaminated site could be routinely exposed to up to half of an adult human’s daily dose of antidepressants

Australian Rivers Are Contaminated With Pharmaceuticals. That's Bad News For Platypuses, Study Says

The team found evidence of human medications in every insect tested, including those from national park previously believed to be free of contaminants

In the Pheidole genus of ants, some insects grow into soldiers with disproportionately large heads, while others grow to be smaller workers.

This "Useless" Organ Determines Which Ants Grow Into Large Soldiers

Rudimentary wing discs in ant larvae, which only grow to wings in queens, appear to influence growth into a soldier or worker

A study conducted during the 2017 total solar eclipse in North America found that bees remained active during the partial-eclipse phases both before and after the period of totality, but they essentially ceased flying during totality.

Busy Bees Take a Break During Total Solar Eclipses

The 2017 North American eclipse gave researchers an inside look at how bees respond to light—with the help of a few hundred elementary-schoolers

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