Bugs

[Blue Frost]

[video][/video]

[Gary Oak]

I don't have headphones so I don't know where that nest is but I have heard about the invasive yellow jackets having ginormous multi queen nests in New Zealand. Could you please move that video to my bugs thread please ? I hope they aren't morphing into multi queen nests elsewhere, Imagine the amount of food they would require everyday ? They would out compete the native wasps wherever they are. They also would be as lethal as killer bees. If that man hadn't been wearing a beesuit he could not have survived the amount of stings he would have recieved. I kill the invasive yellow jackets whenever I can. Yellow jackets can be mistaken for the native to British Columbia paper wasps which are quite docile in comparison.

[Blue Frost]

Patterson, LA is the location.

[Renee]

Patterson, LA is the location.

Yellow jackets are a pain in the ass. I hit as nest of them with a lawn mower once. Boy did they get pissed.

Wouldn't it have been better and safer to just bug bomb the shed a bunch of times before removing the nest?

[Blue Frost]

Yeah really instead of letting them swarm, and having a young queen escape.
It's not like they have honey you would want.

[Gary Oak]

This could be a disaster if they now have multi queen nests in the USA. This could spread up to Canada.

[Blue Frost]

[video][/video]

[Gary Oaktree]

I really hope that we do find a way to break down styrofoam and plastics. This may be great news. I hate seeing styrofoam and plastic littered and often pick it up. If I am in the bush I often burn it to break it down.

[Blue Frost]

I wish they wouldn't use it as packing, there is alternatives now they could use.

[Gary Oak]

A friend was bitten in Thailand b one of their huge centipedes and he told me that it is more painful than fifty times a bee sting.

Centipedes Can Kill Animals 15 Times Their Size Thanks to This "Spooky Toxin"
Whoa.

A bite from a venomous centipede can cause swelling and excruciating pain. And for a mouse – even one 15 times larger than a centipede – the bite can be deadly.

Most predators hunt smaller animals. Blue whales, the largest carnivores on earth, are an extreme example: Each day a whale swallows millions and millions of crustaceans called krill that are about the size of an aspirin tablet.


Centipedes, though, do not abide by this rule. Researchers in Venezuela have seen centipedes skitter up cave walls to eat much heavier bats.

And scientists studying centipedes in China observed a golden head centipede, weighing three grams, as it defeated a 45-gram mouse. The centipede quickly subdued its much larger prey thanks to an unusual and potent venom.

"Comparison is difficult to establish among venomous animals because of their preying habit," said Shilong Yang, an expert in venom and toxins at the Kunming Institute of Zoology in China.

But, to Yang's knowledge, the centipede holds a record by capturing prey 15 times its body weight within 30 seconds.

Yang and his co-authors, in a report published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, identified the toxin that gives centipedes this deadly ability.

They isolated a molecule in centipede venom, a peptide, which they named Ssm Spooky Toxin. (The golden head centipede, also known as the Chinese red-headed centipede, has the scientific name Scolopendra subspinipes mutilans, hence Ssm.) The toxin blocks the movement of potassium into and out of mammal cells.


Healthy cells can push potassium ions through their membranes. Cells in airways, for instance, need this flow of potassium ions to control muscle contractions and keep a mouse breathing.

Ssm Spooky Toxin halts this flow like an overzealous traffic cop.

Because potassium channels exist throughout the body, "centipedes' venom has evolved to simultaneously disrupt cardiovascular, respiratory, muscular and nervous systems," Yang said. "This molecular strategy has not been found in other venomous animals."

The study authors hypothesise that the toxin halts blood flow to the heart, leading to heart failure and ultimately death.

This research suggests that a drug called retigabine might neutralise the centipede toxin, Yang said.

Retigabine, an anticonvulsant used to treat epilepsy, opens the potassium channels that the centipede toxin blocks. (In June 2017, pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline announced it would discontinue the production of retigabine, citing low demand among patients with epilepsy.)

In lab tests, retigabine inhibited the effects of centipede venom in monkeys; equivalent human data does not exist.

Human deaths from centipedes appear to be exceedingly rare. As of 2006, physicians reported in the Emergency Medicine Journal, there were only three recorded cases of people who had died of centipede venom.

The bites do not need to be fatal to be mightily unpleasant. In Hawaii, centipedes have been known to send victims to emergency clinics.

Between 2007 and 2011, for Hawaiian emergency visits classified as having natural causes, centipedes were responsible for 1 in 10 cases, on a par with bee and wasp stings.

http://www.sciencealert.com/powerful-ce ... mes-bigger

[Blue Frost]

Just think when they where 8 foot long in the Carboniferous period.

[Gary Oak]

This spider is gigantic. Can you imagine one of these monsters scurrying across a room that you are in ?


Giant spider drags away, eats opossum in Amazon rainforest




https://www.cbsnews.com/news/spider-eat ... ainforest/

[Blue Frost]

That hard shell on it's back is a sign it's quite prehistoric, the more of a shell they have, and skin exposed with the odd creases in it the older the spiders are in the timeline of history.
I'm thinking the reason it's so large is it's absorbing more oxygen, and nitrogen than your average spider. Back in prehistory when they where giants like that the atmosphere was rich in Oxygen, and nitrogen.

[Gary Oak]

This giant looks like with it's legs extended it would fill a large dinner plate. A coworker told me that he had a tarantula once and they actually are quite intelligent and that it go attached to him. I also have heard that the atmosphere was different before and that this is why the dinosaurs were so large.

[Blue Frost]

The Carboniferous Period the earth had vast plant life, and the air was so rich with oxygen it caught on fire from lightning in areas I have read.
I added oxygen, and nitrogen contributed to the size of insects, and spiders.

People eat those big tarantulas down south.

Speaking of pets, I had a wolf spider that lived in my room for at least two years, he would crawl up to me regularly for me to pet it.
It lived in the top corner near the duct work, and I never saw any bug in my room with it around.
It went out one day to the washroom, my mom killed it I found it when I came home from work.
I named it Harvy, but it was likely a female spider big as it was. It was about the size of a silver dollar.

[Gary Oak]

That’s a quite small brain but maybe it is still capable of emotion and thought.

[Blue Frost]

I think the Jumping spiders are the most intelligent, the wolf, and tarantula is more primal.
The Jumpers will study you, or prey, and will work out some complex plan.
LOL, I love the jumpers.

[Mel Gibson]

Luckily no big or deadly spiders here! The worst ones we have here are Black Widows, but they are fairly rare and not really a threat to humans...

I don't mind spiders, but they must remain outside. If they remain outside, I shall leave them in peace. Enter my dwelling unannounced though, and their fate may depend on the mood I'm in!

[Blue Frost]

We take them out now, and let them go on their way, if black widow i will kill it, same with the Brown Recluse spiders.
I don't mind most of them except the bad ones that can hurt someone.
Ill take snakes, and relocate them also, the last few years all I see is the good old rat snakes they take care of a lot of pest, and even other snakes.

[Mel Gibson]

We only have small non-biting snakes here! For some reason rattlers don't like this climate, but the Okanagan (which is only a three hour drive away) does have the rattler! Gotta use a bit of caution when hiking through the grass there...