Bees, wasps, butterflies and many other small winged insects flew in the air. It was autumn. The insects were apparently looking for a place to leave their eggs before winter, so that in the spring they would hatch into young insects and continue their life cycle. And how many other insects were there, crawling on the ground, terrestrial. There were even insects that ran on water; they had specially adapted legs.
"Insects are arthropods - they are the most numerous species of animals. If you add up all the other animals on earth, their number will not be greater than arthropods and insects. Some insects are larger, and some are so small that you cannot notice them with the naked eye. All insects are similar in that they have six legs, three pairs.
Insects can have large and long wings, small and short wings, or they can be wingless. In beetles, for example, the wings have layers, the outer wings have a hard chitinous shell, and the inner wings are thin and can be folded under the upper ones.
Insects can have a needle-, sting-, pincer-shaped, or simply rounded tail. They don't have a heart. Their circulatory system is open. The body of insects has various structures. Bees, for example, have a pre-stomach where they store nectar so that they can then chew it and get honey from the nectar. The oral apparatus of insects can be very complex, this is due to their life and nutrition style. Blood-sucking insects, like mosquitoes, for example, have a small trunk that extends to suck blood through a puncture they make in the skin of a human or animal.
Insects have antennas on their heads through which they communicate and can sense smell, sound, and light. They also have eyes that can have a complex structure, they look like a mosaic".
The school-students looked at the blackboard, where there was a picture of Ladybug, and tried to figure out what determines the number of spots on Ladybug's wings. "Perhaps the number of spots on a ladybug's wings increases with age, like in turtles?" - suggested the boy with glasses.
“I’m most interested in ants,” thought Apollinaria. "Ants can build entire cities - anthills, they can show each other the way to food and home. They come to each other's aid, and this is the most wonderful thing that can be observed. Ants have a winged queen, workers and warriors. I wonder how long ants have existed? They seem so defenseless, but they lived even when people did not yet know how to build cities. Perhaps people learned from ants. And now people make robots that look like ants."
Comments