bug rant! bug rant! bug rant!
tell us about your favorite bug :3
Most people, when saying bug, mean insect, though bugs are actually a specific type of insects! And, as I have already talked about my favourite insect(s) here, I figure this is a better alternative.
So, out of the order Hemiptera ((True) Bugs), my favs have, since childhood, always been Firebugs. They used to be all over the place back in kindergarten, and they look(ed) like the ladybug's cooler cousin. Huge batches of them look(ed) so pretty, and not only that, but one could often see two Firebugs connected at the abdomens, scuttling around a little awkwardly but still dextrously. Now, a child hardly understands that these pretty little things... connect like that for up to a week due to reproductive purposes, where the male, er... ejaculate-guards. Basically, he tries ensuring that his competition isn't the one to pass on their genetic information via offspring instead of him. But! To kids? That is the most horrifyingly cool and coolly horrifying stuff you can see! I love(d) them, man. Though they were killed a lot more than they deserve. Also yeah they're called Firebugs just cos of that patterns, nothing else. Little lame.
Here's (low-res) pics of the pretties:
Something that is not a little lame, though - not lame at all, even, is that they are racist. Kinda. Not really. When having experiments ran on them, Firebugs responded differently in American labs than they had in Czech ones, where experiments had been previously run (by the very same scientists). Instead of developing into adults, Firebugs in American labs would either enter an additional, unprecedented juvenile stage, or enter adulthood with nymph characteristics. This turned out to be due to American paper towels being different (- as they were used in the rearing process)! Not just that, even paper overall! This was because American paper was made out of balsam fir trees, which produced a hormone similar to the juvenile hormone of Firebugs! They even tested it with American and European newspapers, with the same result! However, this result hasn't reared it's unique head with any other species! Really makes me unsure what to think, because, while it's super cool that they are so unique even in their hormone receptors, but it's also a little silly, isn't it? A random tree makes you a teenager forever until you die of not growing up. Now that's a YA book I'd read!
