The shaggy spider – formidable enemy of birds

This being is very big (it can be for 15 cm) and poisonous. They inhabit only in the tropics. There may be roughly 600 species of spider-robbers. Some of them, which are the largest, are not poisonous for people. Another spider’s stings are mortal for people.

Big spiders hunt in the night. They don’t like sunlight and hide in the grass, under ground in the holes, under trees roots. Spiders don’t have so paws so as a mole but they can dig rather deep hole. Shaggy spiders don’t make web, they usually attack their prey.

Thanks to little hairs on the spider’s paws they can climb along the trees. Spiders can fall from the highest trees and don’t hurt oneself: their paws help like a parachute.

Hairs are very thin and brittle on the spider’s paws, so you don’t touch he: these hairs are like splinters and your hand can get inflamed because of them.

Yellow crazy ants - Australian nightmare

"This tiny ant will destroy our culture, our ground, our life so we should kill it right now" sad the Australian ranger from the Christmas Island. For killing that yellow mad ants, helicopters rise to the sky.

So, why that ants is so dangerous?

Crazy, and also mad (Yellow Crazy Ants), these ants have been named for feverish behavior and chaotic movements.
On scientific classification, a name of those ants is "Anoplolepis gracilipes".
This yellow long-lagged small insect, according to the "Database of the most dangerous aggressors on a global scale" (Global Invasive Species Database), is the one of the most aggressive species on a planet and included into the "100 of the World's Worst Invasive Alien Species".

Entomologists consider, that the native land of these insects is the Western Africa, India or China. They spread all over the world with help of human being. Development of trade assists to the invasion of the ants because these aggressors can travel practically in everything: in ground, wood, packing materials, in coconuts, coffee, cocoa, and on any vehicles - cars, ships, planes.

 

They eat everything that saw. Though the ant also is considered as "a predator cleaning garbage", it does not prevent to hunt on
spiders, crabs, birds, mammals and reptiles. In addition to this "foodstuff" rich with fibes, the wrecker receives carbohydrates and amino acids from plants.

One of the vivid examples of ant's destructive abilities is an attack to Christmas Island in Indian Ocean.
Here yellow mad ants, since 1989, have created supercolonies and have killed 15-20 million red crabs - 30% of all population.
It has led to the serious changes in ecosystem of the island and has threatened weight of rare and dying out kinds.

The same occurs now on peninsula Arnhemland(Arnhem Land) where the wrecker has invade, apparently, during the Second World war.
American vessels often plied between Australia and islands, occupied by the mad ants, in the south of Pacific Ocean.

For today invaders have grasped 25 thousand square kilometers of the ground, severely competing with "spineless" residents or killing them. The density in the ant’s supercolonies is surprising - its reaches 1 thousand insects on square meter or 79 million on hectare of a bush.

By the way, ant hills of yellow mad ants named supercolonies knowingly: 300 queens and 2,5-36 thousands ant-workers can live lumpsum just in one "jack"!

The periods of duplication can alternate during the year, but in most cases the posterity is born to the beginning of a damp season.

Eggs appear in 18-20 days after pairing and larvas of the workers demands approximately 20 days, and queen-larvas - 30-40 days. Ants live 76-84 days.

Ant queen

However we shall return to the north of Australia, where billions yellow mad ants will be poisoned by ecologists from state organization, named CSIRO (Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization) for the sake of rescue other inhabitants of peninsula.

It is necessary to note that to destroy Anoplolepis gracilipes is necessary not only for the sake of native ants, being on the decline and rare kinds of butterflies(Euploea alcathoe enastri).

Large animals, like a kangaroo and opossums also should struggle for a survival, because of an aggressor.

People can suffer too: local residents already speak about reduction of stocks of food, as tastes of aggressors and natives sometimes coincide, for example, if it is berries.

By then way, we have not explained, how yellow mad ants could kill so much crabs.

The matter is that they inject an ant acid into eyes of the victims, blinding them, and, that, dooming on starvation. Then predators snatch on a defenseless essence and devour it.

Crab, killed by ants

In general, CSIRO plans to fight with ants, dumping granules of specially created poison to the colonies from helicopters.
Granules are balls under name "Presto", containing a fish flour which ants, like as, love, and other animals cannot suffer.
It mixed with a Fipronul in small concentration for the ant has had time before death, to drag bait in a colony and to poison all in the being.


On Christmas island, poison has proved perfectly, therefore people in CSIRO hopes to destroy up to 75% of yellow ants within the nearest year and, then, completely to exterminate aggressors.

A tiny scorpion - pseudoscorpion

That post is about funny insect - pseudoscorpion.

Pseudoscorpion (false scorpion), common name for any of a group of small arachnids that look like little scorpions but have no scorpion's long tail and sting. You can meet Pseudoscorpions in leaf litter and soil, under rocks, and on intertidal algae. Some are phoretic-that is, they "travel" on other insects, such as beetles and flies. Some pseudoscorpion species live together with other arthropods, such as large beetles or ants. ~2000 species of pseudoscorpions are known.

  

The abdomen is elliptic with wide junction with the rectangular carapace, the shell-like covering of the head and top part of the body. The chelicerae, or grasping pincers, are little and are equipped with structures for cleaning the mouthparts. The pedipalps, smaller, pincerlike appendages, have poison glands opening at the tips. On some parts of the body are numerous trichobothria, or sensory hairs, which can sense small air currents. Pseudoscorpions move slowly, holding their pedipalps in front of them. They feed on small arthropods, which they subdue with poison and then tear apart with the chelicerae. Pseudoscorpion respiration occurs through 2 pairs of spiracles, or openings to the outside, leading to a tracheal system, branching tubes that bring air to the system. The third pair of walking legs has excretory glands near the coxae, or base segments. Pseudoscorpions are from one to several millimeters long (0,04 to 0,25 in).
 
The sexes are similar in appearance. They display a number of complex mating rituals. In some species, the male deposits a spermatophore, or sperm bundle, in the shape of a stalk on the ground. The female is attracted to the stalk chemically, or she may follow a strand of silk laid down by the male. She then positions herself over the spermatophore and takes it into her genital opening. In other species, the male may guide the female to the spermatophore and then position her over it by grasping her pedipalps. He then pushes against her to aid in the uptake of the sperm. The female produces eggs after successful sperm transfer. The eggs are held in a membranous sac attached to the female, and she gives them nourishment from her ovaries. The young emerge from the sac after shedding their skin, or molting, twice and undergo two more molts before becoming adults, which may take up to a year. From two to 50 young may be hatched per brood cycle. Pseudoscorpions live 2 to 5 years.