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"People staying in the hands" is protection: protecting plants, protecting green, protecting nature, protecting life?
may be! What we prefer to protect is your heart that loves to read and love nature.
——The official micro-platform of the Journal of Plant Protection
Edward Munch, The Scream
Cover your ears and scream,
This time to tell you a horror story.
Timid people please quickly paddle by yourself
→ → →
The protagonist of the story is it
Source: en.wikipedia.org
Yes, you read that right.
That's it
A fly with an unassuming appearance.
╮(﹀_﹀)╭
Cut ~ ~ what is so terrible about this?
If you only look at the appearance is really easy to be deceived,
But they're not compromised
It is a group of "cunning and vicious" people.
The first murderer in the universe
These terrible flies are flea flies.
It is a phoridae insect of the family Diptera flea flies.
Maggot flea fly megaselia scalaris Source: en.wikipedia.org
Flea flies are a small group of flies that often have a bulging back, hence the name Humpback flies. Their diet is diverse, and rotting flora and fauna, feces, fungi, etc. can be used as food.
Among them, it is frightening that there are some flea flies that are very keen on decapitating ants. The ant's head moved, dead and dead, seeing the remnants of these heads and bodies separated, Xiaobian silently touched his own small neck.
Source: nauka21vek.ru
Why do you always cut off other people's heads, so bloody and violent, isn't it a group of perverted "executioners"? When encountering such a cruel flea fly, the ant can only ask for more blessings, after all, no one in nature will shout "leave people under the knife".
Then many people must also have questions, how does a flea fly that looks weak and deceitful cut off the ant's head?
Source: uace scomm
It turns out that these flea flies are parasitic, and female flea flies lay eggs inside the ant, and after hatching, the larvae move towards the ant's head and eat its brain and other tissues.
Vomit, instant brain made up some pictures...
But seeing this, Xiaobian is also relieved, because...
Female flea flies detect the location of the host ant by identifying it, and then hover around it to fly, harassing the ants to "work".
With their petite size and flexible hands, they can find the right time and use a unique egg laying device to stab the eggs into the ant's body.
pseudacteon curvatus hook-shaped ovipositor © sandford porter
After that, the fate of the parasitic ants can be imagined, the larvae slowly nibble in their bodies, and the ants also become "zombies", wandering aimlessly.
It wasn't until weeks later, when the flea flies released an enzyme that dissolved the membrane to shed their heads, and they stayed in the fallen heads to pupate and finally break out.
If "blunt knife beheading" is not terrible enough, then the ferocity of the long-beaked flea fly dohrniphora longirostrata below is even higher.
dohrniphora longirostrata © brown
The long-beaked flea fly is fond of the odontomachus genus Odontomachus, also known as saw-needle ants. But sawing needle ants are quite ferocious, and their jaws can quickly open and close within 0.13ms to lock in prey.
odontomachus clarus
However, this also does not stop the cunning of flea flies, which usually choose injured sawing needle ants to attack. Female flea flies will secretly pull on the ants' feet and antennae to see which one is weaker. It seems that insects also know how to bully soft and fear hard!
After selecting the "unlucky ghost", the flea fly will climb on the ant's back, stab the mouthpiece into the ant's neck, and then change the position and repeatedly saw, and finally saw the ant's head down and take it away
Like a Swiss Army knife?
After that, they will find a safe place to eat their heads. But what the female flea fly's intentions are, scientists have not yet determined. It has been suggested that the head of an ant can provide nutrients for female flea flies to lay eggs.
© wendy batons
Violent beheadings of flea flies always feel chilling, but they also have good aspects. Some scientists have used their parasitic habits as a biological control to control invasive red fire ants.
In addition, compared with large flies, some carcass flea flies can easily enter relatively confined spaces through gaps because of their small size, such as indoors with closed doors and windows, cars, relatively sealed plastic bags, coffins, etc., invading the corpse at the first time, thus becoming the main insect evidence at the murder scene.
Maggot Heteroflea Fly: I'm an insect detective
All right
That's the end of the story.
See here,
All are commendable for their courage.
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