GGA Blog

An insect enthusiast vacationing in Thailand lifted a rock with the hopes that maybe he would stumble upon an undiscovered type of bug. He did indeed find a creature that he had never seen before, but a colleague of his had just discovered it in the same country. That is a bummer for the guy vacationing, but at least he got to study it before anyone else. The centipede has been named Scolopendra Cataracta,

It is commonly believed that over the course of our lives we will consume a whole lot of spiders by inadvertently eating them in our sleep. And not only that, but there are several common stories that talk about bugs laying eggs inside different body cavities in humans. These stories are believed to be myths, but the fact is doctors do see emergency room visits involving bugs in body cavities

The diving bell spider lives a seemingly difficult, and probably frustrating life. This type of spider is the only spider to call the water its habitat. However, this spider does not have gills, so it is forced to build small submersibles that allow for underwater travel.

Up till recently the only mosquitos known to be capable of transmitting the Zika virus were species that prefer warmer, tropical climates. However, scientists just discovered that a much more prevalent mosquito species in the U.S. called Culex tarsalis

There are some pretty hardcore animals in this world, but I have never heard of an animal that wears bones on its body. Except, of course, for the Uraba Lugens, a type of caterpillar that, at some point, discovered that wearing the bones of dead insects would work as an effective method of self-defense

A man by the name of Jerry Butler, an entomologist, somehow managed to get a male Horsefly to fly after a pellet shot from a pellet gun. Amazingly the Horsefly was able to catch up to the pellet after it was shot from a gun. The pellet was traveling at 145 kilometers per hour, which means that the male Horsefly can travel at least that fast.

Most insects do not live past a year, and there are plenty that do not make it past a couple of weeks. However, there are some insects that can live for decades

Learn more about the Weatherbeeta Supa Fly Insect Shield for horses and how it can protect your animals from annoying and harmful flying pests.

Well not exactly like the electronic GPS that we are all aware of, but cockroaches do have a sophisticated internal mechanism that allows them to navigate your home. Researchers placed cockroaches inside of a maze similar to the classic experiments that used rats to navigate mazes. Once the roaches moved through the maze the researchers changed parts of the maze to see if roaches would remember where to find the end of the maze. What the researchers found was that roaches would move to the same parts of the maze that accessed the end of the maze despite the maze being changed. This finding indicates that roaches did not rely solely on present sensory information, but they were able to recall how to navigate their environment from earlier experience. Additionally, the researchers monitored the brain activity of the roaches and discovered that the roaches have a complex neural mechanism similar to rats and even humans that allows them to navigate through complex environments. This may explain why roaches are so hard to find once we find our bug spray. Do you think that all animals, even small brained animals, possess similar neural structures that allow them to navigate complex environments?