Cheetah in the insect world
Ktyr, a two-winged predator insect, for its speed gained the fame of a cheetah among insects. This insect always needs the highest blade of grass, as it is an excellent observation post for an ambush.
It is only within reach that a suitable insect appears, the kyr acts as an interceptor: a sharp take-off, a throw - and the victim is caught.
Approximately once every 10 minutes, a ktyr is removed and flies for reconnaissance near the ambush site. It often happens that an aggressive and strong attack even attacks such well-protected insects as bees, wasps, and race beetles.
Scientists have noticed that this predatory insect learns to hunt throughout its life. Yes, yes, it studies! Each ktyr has its own food preferences. Some people like some insects, and others like others.
Interestingly, predator predilections are often determined during his first hunt in his life. Whoever caught the first will continue to catch more often than others. The ktyr adapts to the behavior of these very insects to make it easier to hunt. But if on some day in the meadow they turn out to be too few for a successful hunt, ktyr will be re-qualified for more massive species.
Teeth in the stomach
In the rainforest sometimes you can see just fantastic pictures. In dense foliage near the bird’s nest left unattended, the head of a snake appears. This is a representative of a group of egg snakes. Bird eggs are her only food. Therefore, at a time when the birds are hatching their future offspring, egg snakes try to eat well, as a reserve, because the rest of the year they will have to eat a hungry diet.
In cases where the animal eats only one kind of food, scientists use the term "food specialization." A specific diet often affects the structure of the animal (more often - on the internal, and sometimes on the external). The egg snake is no exception.
Getting close to the nest, the hunter begins to swallow eggs. But bird eggs are often much larger in size than the snake's head, and it seems that they simply cannot be swallowed by it physically. However, the mouth of an egg snake has an amazing secret. Her jaws are not bonded to each other, but are located freely. Due to this, at the time of swallowing the eggs they diverge to the required distance, and then converge again. A snake crawls on an egg, and it appears as if in a stocking.
A swallowed egg moves along the esophagus and almost immediately runs into ... snake teeth. From the point of view of anatomy, strictly speaking, these are not teeth, but sharp outgrowths of the cervical vertebrae, which form a kind of file. Having swallowed an egg, the snake begins to wriggle strongly. At the same time, she, like a knife, cuts eggshells with her vertebrae. The contents of the egg are poured and flows into the stomach through a special narrowing of the esophagus, which is located immediately after the “file”. Shell fragments linger in this place, and after a while the snake spits them out through the mouth.
Winged lifeguards
On the central square of one of the cities in the state of Illinois (USA) is a 20-meter tower, hung with nests of swallows. It is made for swallows, which the residents of the city specially settled next to them. Why did they need this? Each swallow destroys up to 1000 mosquitoes, flies and other midges per day, saving people from hordes of insects. As a result, it’s good for everyone, and swallows and people. A person can get even more tangible help from swifts. Feeding the chicks, parents offer them a kind of flat cakes, "bags" with food, where 200 to 2000 insects are "packed" in the shell of sticky saliva.It is easy to calculate that, provided 30-40 times a day, babies eat about 40-60 thousand insects! And starlings often save the southern regions from a devastating invasion of locusts.
Each starling can destroy up to 200 locusts per day. If we compare this with the mass of the bird itself, it turns out that the starling eats twice as much as its own weight. A great benefit to our gardens is the little tit-blue tit. Gluttonous chicks per day eat up to 1000 different flies, caterpillars, bugs brought by caring parents.
Young cannibals
In nature, you can find many cases when representatives of a particular species eat their own kind. This phenomenon is called cannibalism. Its most amazing form is observed among the inhabitants of the underwater world - sharks. Sharks have species that breed by laying eggs, but there are viviparous sharks, in which completely independent sharks appear. In such viviparous species, a surprisingly cruel, but quite justifiable from the point of view of biology, phenomenon is observed - intrauterine cannibalism. A female shark carries in its body several dozen embryos at once.
There may be 30 or more. For some time they develop peacefully, however, starting from a certain moment in the womb of the female, strange processes begin to occur. Unborn sharks fight for their existence in a very original way: the strongest and largest shamelessly eat their brothers and sisters. And they do it so energetically that by the moment of the birth of the light inside the body of the female only a few remain.
The most courageous
A huge number of fish live on a coral reef. Here you can meet a giant and a dwarf, a predator and its prey, as well as creatures living in complete harmony with each other. All of them sometimes need help, which is provided with pleasure by a tiny fish-nurse - a bastard-cleaner. These tiny fish are kept in large schools, and each school has its own territory, which he prefers not to leave, - a kind of kind of medical office. Almost all reef dwellers know this feature of baby doctors. When it becomes necessary to undergo a "medical examination", the fish swim to the lips and give themselves at their complete disposal.
Even sharks and moray eels forget about their predatory inclinations. Gubans are universal workers. They can clean the mouth of the fish, teeth, can clean up the gills, freeing them from stuck debris. They work on the surface of the body, cleaning off skin parasites and removing dead cells. All that they collect will be their food. During operation, the cleaners constantly touch their fins to the "patient". This is a kind of signal that the work is still ongoing and it is advisable not to confuse the squig with prey. When a predator gets bored of what is happening, he reports this to the guban, closing his mouth. At the same time, he does not swallow the cleaner, and the quick-witted fish understands that the session is over, and when the mouth opens again at the next moment, the worm quickly emerges out.
Amazing bubble mix
What and how do whales eat? There are various ways these giants use it. The famous blue whales have in their mouth a special device resembling a filter, the so-called whalebone. By the way, this mustache has no analogue in wildlife! These are really “mustaches”, derivatives of hair that once grew on the upper lip, but turned up inside the mouth, hanging down along the edge of the upper jaw. The fused hairs formed a kind of plate that has a fringe along its inner edge. This is a whale sieve.
A whale collects several tons of water in its mouth, along with which there are fish and plankton microorganisms. Then the water is pushed out of the mouth with a tongue that works like a piston.At the same time, the entire catch remains on the filter fringe and is swallowed. And since the size of the whalebone and, accordingly, the fringe is different for different types of whales, someone has to be content with only large plankton, fish and squid, while someone has the opportunity to eat small plankton.
The closest relative of the blue whale, the humpback whale, has no less interesting hunting tactics. Its main food is schools of fish such as herring or capelin. To catch these fast and brisk swimmers, humpback whales should try their best. One of the ways of hunting is that the whale swims in the center of the fish school, turns on its side and begins to clap on the surface of the water with its fins. The shock wave thus formed stuns and disorients the fish.
Another way to hunt humpbackers is to fish in the air. Having gained more air, the whale dives to a rather great depth, trying to be under a fish school. Then it begins to slowly rise to the surface, releasing a huge number of small air bubbles. A whale swims in a spiral, which is why air bubbles form in the water a real pipe of large diameter, in which the fish gather, since there is no risk of overcoming the barrier. Having driven the fish to the very surface of the water, the whales calmly begin their meal.
The biggest lover of canned food
Our mole can rightly be considered one of the most voracious creatures. This dungeon master spends most of the day in his dark labyrinths, breaking through more and more new passages. Is he not enough of those that he already has? It turns out that the mole does not dig its tunnels for the sake of pleasure or its own comfort, although it cannot do without it. The main task facing the mole is to find as many larvae of beetles and earthworms underground as this is his favorite food.
In this search, his nose provides an invaluable service. The scent of a mole is so subtle that he always accurately determines the direction in which he needs to dig another hole, even if the potential prey is at a great distance. When the mole finally gets to a particularly tasty worm or larva, it behaves differently. If the beast is hungry, then most likely he will immediately eat his find with great appetite. If lunch can wait, then the mole prefers to make canned food for itself in case in the near future it does not find enough food. He cleverly bites off the “heads” of the worms, immobilizing them in this way, but leaving them alive. Then he makes a small depression in the wall of the underground passage and puts the prepared product there. Well, what are not living canned food?
