Did You Know? Science Edition

Foregoing Figs.

That’s what I may be doing in the future after the following enlightenment.  Did you know that a fig is not a real fruit but is a fleshy bundle of flowers?  These flowers can only be pollinated by a certain kind of female wasp called a fig wasp.  She wriggles her way inside the fig through a tiny hole, ripping her wings off in the process.  She pollinates the flower with pollen that she has on her from the flower she was born in, lays her eggs, then…. DIES.   Inside the fig the young wasps will hatch and mate with each other, the female wasps will then wriggle out to find their own new fig to pollinate.  The male wasps are wingless and can never escape.

Bumbling Bees

We had heard of the bee dance, the little dance that they give to tell other bees in the hive where the “good stuff” is.  Today we learned the actual choreography and the logistics of the thing.  So, the messenger bee dances in the shape of a circle 8.  The centre line of the 8 points in the direction of the “stash”.  As he dances along that centre line he wiggles his body back and forth.  The *faster* he wiggles, the closer the treasure.   Pretty cool.

Prolific Pests

Did you know that if all the aphids descended from a single female in one summer  were lined up end to end they would stretch more than 4 times around the earth?  And btw, did you know that ants are aphid farmers?  They literally coral them and care for them to consume the nectar like substance they produce with their digestive juices.

Sensitive Suitors

Did you know that male moths have feathery antennae covered in hairs that have such sensitive sensors they can detect the scent of a female moth over a mile away?

Enjoying the Fruit of One’s Labors.

Did you know that female orb spiders make a new web every single day and eat the old one to avoid wasting the protein found in the silk?  A spider’s silk is five times stronger than a thread of steel of the equal dimension.