There is a peculiar insect in the Amazon rainforest called the longan chicken. It is similar in shape to a locust, yellow in color, and has a hard derivative at the top of the head, but this derivative does not belong to the head but is part of the nose.
I failed to observe the ecological habits of the Dragon's Eye, but according to the data, whenever disturbed, the small animal violently hits the trunk of the tree with a derivative at the top of the head to deter its opponents; if this does not work, it will fly away.
There is a beautiful story about the Dragon's Eye chicken in the Indian tribes: if a young woman is stung by a Dragon's Eye chicken, she must have sex with her boyfriend within 24 hours or she will die quietly. I think it's just a legend, probably invented by a Young Indian guy in order to coax his sweetheart.
The image comes from the Internet
The giant spider is the largest spider in the world, and has been painted with horror and mystery by novelists or explorers many times. I once saw an illustration in a book about a South American explorer: an explorer with a dozen giant spiders on his bare body, the explorer slammed down hard, bleeding profusely.
This is undoubtedly an exaggeration, because giant spiders live alone, each individual lives alone in the underground burrow, generally only 1-2 per hectare, and there will never be swarms of giant spiders besieging a person. In addition, giant spiders hide in crooked holes paved with leaves during the day, and only go out at dusk and at night, which is not easy to encounter people.
However, for the "civilized people" living in the primeval forest, the unexpected can indeed happen at any time. A French colleague of mine in his 60s was stabbed by a giant spider while putting on his boots in the early morning, and it turned out that a giant spider had thrown the wrong door at night.
It cannot be denied that giant spiders are indeed fierce, with a pair of pointed hooks on their mouths, which stab their prey with hooks when they attack, while injecting venom to kill their prey and decompose the flesh into a liquid to suck.
I have seen a giant spider attack a mountain rat: a giant spider lurks next to the mouth of the cave, and a mountain rat forages on the ground and does not intend to walk up to it; the latter pounces on it, catches the mountain rat at once, and in an instant, the prey is motionless; then the giant spider slowly drags the mountain rat into the hole and digests it.
Giant spiders feed mainly on small mammals such as rodents and marsupials, and sometimes hunt other animals, such as snakes.
In addition to the hooks in the mouth, another weapon of the giant spider is the poisonous hair on the back, which the indigenous people told me would cause extremely strong irritation if it entered the eyes or nostrils. I haven't experienced it, but I'd rather believe it's true.
Once I curiously fought a giant spider with a thin branch, and when it was attacked, it stood up and raised its front paws high at me. After a while, seeing that there was no movement, it lowered its claws and wanted to leave quietly. I blocked it back and forth with the branches, and it again assumed a defensive posture. After repeating this several times, it finally couldn't bear it, and angrily scratched its back with its hind feet one after another, and suddenly, the fine fluff fluttered and scattered into the air, and I quickly ran away.
However, giant spiders are not without natural predators, and a huge horse bee is dedicated to their "trouble". The wasp is almost the size of the East Asian locust in China, living solitary and making a frightening tremor on its wings as it flies.
They can always find the giant spider by unknown means of communication, and use the poisonous needle in the tail to inject venom into the giant spider. The giant spider's body became numb after being attacked, and the wasp was allowed to drag its body into the hole that the wasp had dug in advance. The wasp then lays eggs into the giant spider, and the eggs absorb the body fluids of the giant spider as nutrients during development, and the giant spider does not die completely during this period, but is forced to serve as a living feed depot for the breeding of the offspring of the wasp.
Animals are such a thing that drops one thing and one thing, forming a chain of food chains and intricate food webs.
It can be said that frogs are common amphibians, but the poison dart frog, which is blue throughout and inlaid with golden patterns, can only be seen in humid South American rainforests. Moreover, compared with other similar animals, the poison dart frog has great particularities in terms of feeding habits, reproduction and survival strategies.
Unlike many other frogs, poison dart frogs do not catch insects flying in the air, but specialize in hunting tiny ants and mites on the ground. These ants and mites often live under collapsed trees, so poison dart frogs are most likely to be found there.
In the forest, dense trees block almost all of the sunlight, and after the big tree collapses, the sunlight reaches the trunk and the ground near it. In the past, people did not understand the habits of poison dart frogs, and mistakenly thought that poison dart frogs gathered near falling trees because they loved sunlight. Recently, the Dutch scholar Marga has concluded after careful research that contrary to the previous view, poison dart frogs not only dislike sunlight, but also can even kill them after a long period of sunlight exposure.
Poison dart frogs have a special male juvenile behavior, this frog female adult is larger than the male adult, but does not feed offspring. Mating between male and female often occurs near the orys plants that inhabit the fallen wood, not because the poison dart frog admires the beauty of the flowers, but because the alternating leaves of these plants form a small "pond" that provides a place for the frog eggs to develop.
Males and females mate, and the female frogs leave quietly after laying their eggs in the water, and only the male patiently takes care of the offspring. Once the egg develops into a tadpole, the male carries the tadpole to different places with a moderate amount of water, because the tadpole is carnivorous, and the two tadpoles together will kill each other. Although it is in the rain forest, it is not easy to find a place where water can accumulate for a long time, I have seen the tadpole of the poison dart frog in the epiphytes of the aeolian family on the treetops at a height of 40 meters high, which means that the poison dart frog has to climb up the canopy layer little by little with its eggs on its back.
Contrary to the survival strategies of many animals that use hidden colors to escape natural enemies, poison dart frogs use warning colors to avoid killing, and they are particularly dazzling in the green forest. It turns out that the skin of the poison dart frog is distributed with poisonous glands, and the venom secreted by the poisonous glands may be fatal to predators. As a result, the bright colors and patterns became a signal to intimidate the predators. The poison dart frog has made the entire family survive to this day by virtue of its vigilance color and poison glands.
However, since humans set foot in South America, the vigilance color and glands of the poison dart frog are no longer a panacea for self-defense, and the Indians can skillfully extract venom for hunting. They tied the four legs of the poison dart frog with thin rattan, and then gently stimulated their backs with a small wooden stick, and the poison dart frog secreted milky white venom. After the venom is cleared, the Indians will release the poison dart frog so that the critters can continue to "produce" the venom.
These extracted venoms are coated on arrows and javelins, and hunting monkeys with arrows made in this way will kill the animals in an instant, which is the origin of the name poison dart frog. After careful study, scientists have found that the highly toxic substances of the poison dart frog can disrupt the normal activity of the nervous system, resulting in the death of animals.
Later, Columbus discovered the New World, and the "civilized people" broke into the world of poison dart frogs and brought them to the city as pets. Tragically, poison dart frogs are extremely fragile and have strict requirements for food and humidity in their living environment, so once they are taken out of the rainforest, it means the end of the world.
Zhang Shuyi
China was the first ecologist to conduct field research and investigation in the Amazon rainforest of South America. From 1990 to 1994, during his study at the University of Curie in France, he worked for 19 months at the Nouragues Ecological Station of the French National Research Center in the virgin forest of French Guiana, and achieved fruitful scientific research results. This article is a personal experience in the Amazon rainforest narrated by Professor Zhang Shuyi.
——
<h1>Past recommendations:</h1>
Wild Amazon (IV): Magical Mimesis
Wild Amazon (III): Ants of all kinds
Wild Amazon (II): The Colorful Plant Kingdom
Wild Amazon (I): The "Nurig" ecological station in the jungle