Why do some insects not have wings when having wings is an advantage? Wings on insects are described as “being the key evolutionary innovation leading to the success of the group” (Daly 1978). I think the key (to repeat the word) aspect of that quoted …
NEWS AND COMMENT: There’s an invasive species controversy surrounding the popular television programme in the UK, I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here! The BBC Springwatch presenter, Iolo Williams has complained to ‘rural crime officers’, reports The Guardian newspaper, about the cockroaches being invasive …
Due to an invasion of the emerald ash borer beetle in conjunction with climate change causing flooding, swamp ash as it is known by musicians, is dying out which means the wood will no longer be used to make the world’s most prized electric guitars. …
It appears that ants are very intelligent, far more intelligent than perhaps 99.9% of the human population believe. A recent study supports the assertion. The study was published on 8 October 2020 and the source is the British Ecological Society. Researchers observed the behaviour of …
Bees are animals! I just wanted to get that out of the way because this website is about the animal-to-human relationship. People want to help bees because they have read many stories about bees struggling in the modern world because of insecticides killing them and …
I’m going to treat bees as animals in this article (actually they are animals in any case). That’s important because beehives have been installed at HMP Warren Hill in Suffolk. They have proved to be very popular with the inmates. There is a waiting list …
Locusts have been trained to detect explosives and to send back a signal wirelessly to an operator. It sounds like science fiction but locusts have an excellent sense of “smell” (they don’t use a nose to sniff the odour!). They can detect and track new …
A research project has discovered that the reason why locusts swarm and cause such devastating damage to crops is because of a pheromone that they produce. This triggers a desire to join together and form swarms. When they form a swarm they produce more pheromones …
Neonicotinoid pesticides kill bees. The governments and scientists know this. They were banned in order to protect bees in various countries. In France the ban has been lifted under pressure from sugar beet growers to save their crop from a virus. Greenpeace, former ministers, beekeepers …
