Questions tagged [entomology]
Use this tag for questions on insects and spiders. Entomology is the scientific study of insects, a branch of arthropodology. Historically this also included other arthropods such as arachnids (spiders).
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Will there be millions of cicadas per acre when Brood X emerges this year?
A Time article about the upcoming emergence of Brood X cicadas in the U.S. has the following quote from a biologist:
“It’s not something you can ignore,” says John Cooley, a biologist at the ...
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Can the Australian funnel-web spider bite through fingernails?
National Geographic says the following about the Australian funnel-web spider:
The fangs of a funnel-web spider are very strong—they can pierce through shoe leather and fingernails.
I'm not ...
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Is there a species of locust-eating wasp that will check its burrow repeatedly if its food is moved?
The book Do Animals Think? by Clive D. L. Wynne claims that a biologist, Jean-Henri Fabre, conducted a number of experiments on the inflexibility on wasp behaviour.
In particular:
One species of ...
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Do termites produce 10 times more CO2 than humans?
On October 21 2019 Australian Federal MP Malcolm Roberts posted an image to his Facebook feed claiming termites produce 10 times more CO2 than humans in a year. Is there a factual basis to this?
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Do cockroaches eat margarine?
There is a belief that cockroaches will not eat margarine.
Angie's Option Blog
only humans are foolish enough to eat [margarine] – rats and cockroaches won’t touch the stuff.
Facebook post
Even ...
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Does switching the lights off help avoiding mosquitoes?
This Travel Stack Exchange answer states something I long considered for granted (probably because my parents told me so): if you want to avoid mosquitoes, switch off the light.
Opening the window ...
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Is the apparent drop in insect deaths on windshields due to a decline in insect populations?
The "windshield phenomenon" is a
term given to the anecdotal observation that people tend to find fewer insects smashed on the windscreens of their cars now compared to a decade or several ...
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Does light pollution matter for Insect declines and agroecosystems?
Recently it was claimed that the increase in artificial light at night was a significant contributor to the 'ecological armageddon' of decreasing insect populations. It was further argued that the ...
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Are these bugs baffling entomologists with their appearance and behaviour?
Theffeed Tech have one example of a number of articles showing a video of six insects dancing in a synchronised way.
The text reads:
These weird looking bugs appeared in a house in Houston, Texas.
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Does esbiothrin kill mosquitos?
I recently made use of an esbiothrin insecticide spray I bought in Europe.
I've been using this product for a while now, with good results, I found it to be completely useless when used in Morocco.
...
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Do these household substances repel wasps?
Many websites state that basic foods or household materials can repel wasps. For example:
Cucumbers, cloves and dryer-sheets
Peppermint oil, cinnamon powder
Do these substances work as wasp ...
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Can a wasp ingest and use a snake's venom?
Some people claim that if one comes across a dead venomous snake one should always cut of and bury the head as otherwise wasps could reach the venom and add it to their own stinger, for example this ...
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Do Ostrich Eggs repel Spiders?
After someone told me that Ostrich eggs repel Spiders I had to google it. I haven't been able to find a scientific explanation but throughout the Internet there are a lot of articles that mention it ...
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Do honeybees disrupt native pollinators in North America?
One of my colleagues at work is vegan, and I became curious about why vegans don't eat honey.
After a search on the internet I found a website explaining why honey is not vegan.
However what baffled ...
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Do cloves in an apple repel fruit flies
Some cloves in apples have recently appeared in our office. Apparently they will repel fruit flies. They look exactly like the result of following these instructions.
Is there any evidence to suggest ...
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Does baking soda eliminate a cockroach infestation?
My questions concerns a population, more significant than simply exterminating an individual cockroach.
Claim: http://pest.tips.net/T003494_Kill_Roaches_with_Baking_Soda_and_Sugar.html
If you're ...
user16959
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Do mosquitoes urinate on you when they bite you?
This is a claim that I have seen on several "Did You Know?" lists so far. They all state that when a mosquito bites you, they also urinate on you at the same time and that is what causes the area ...
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Do horse chestnuts deter spiders?
In my area, there is a common belief that conkers (horse chestnuts) spread throughout the house deter spiders from entering.
A writer for About.com heard similar tales:
With a little more digging, I ...
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Would humans starve if spiders disappeared?
In this Washington Post article, Norman Platnick of the American Museum of Natural History is quoted as saying the following:
If spiders disappeared, we would face famine.
Spiders are primary ...
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Do plastic bags of water deter flies? [duplicate]
Today I had lunch in a small Mexican taco place, and they had hanging, in the middle of the room, two clear plastic bags filled with water:
I asked the reason for the hanging bags of water, and was ...
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Do roaches die (naturally) on their backs? [closed]
First, a major qualifier here; by naturally, I mean not forced to die on its "stomach" (like by being stepped on). Secondly, I live in the U.S., so maybe this applies to only American roaches.
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Do Florida woods cockroaches (aka Palmetto bugs) commonly sell for ~US$80/kg in China?
According to this article on Yahoo news, citing a similar South China Morning Post article, Yuan Meixia bought her initial stock of 20kg of cockroaches for around US$1600:
Yuan, a pharmacy ...
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Is carbon dioxide from a mosquito trap potent enough to attract mosquitoes?
There is a large number of mosquito killer traps available which claim to work on the principle that carbon dioxide generated from the reaction of titanium dioxide with UV light is used as a trap to ...
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Was sucralose accidentally discovered in the course of insectide research?
I see repeated claims, mostly from sources of highly questionable veracity, that Sucralose was developed while searching for new insecticides. ABC news also makes this claim in a summery of various ...
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Do ants feed on pure honey?
Honey vendors say that to identify pure honey drop a spoonful of honey. If the ants don't feed it is pure.
For example:
Leave a little of testing honey near some ants, if the ants hover around it ...
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Can maggots live in your digestive system?
I was reading several articles about Casu Marzu, a kind of Sardinian cheese delicacy that is infested with maggots.
Many websites claim that these maggots may pass through the digestive tract alive ...
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Has any person ever died from a tarantula bite?
From Wikipedia:Tarantula:
[N]o fatalities have been attributed to tarantula bites...
From Nationalgeographic.com:
According to researchers, there's never been a single confirmed human death ...
user5582
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Do spiders intentionally wear water droplets on their heads?
I discovered today that there are a lot of pictures of spiders "wearing" water drops as hats.
(More research: Warning -- Spiders!)
However, I can't find anything related to why they might do this. ...
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Any science behind folk remedies for mosquito bites?
My child is one of those people who is really attractive to mosquitoes, and she tends to obsess and itch them open — gross. This has prompted much well-meaning folk advice about itches, like this:
So,...
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Can you cause mosquitos to explode from drinking too much blood by flexing your muscles?
I have heard several times as I've grown up that you can flex your muscles to make mosquitos get stuck and explode. Looking around the web, I find several sources claiming the same.
Q: If you flex ...
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Are artificial sweeteners useful as insecticides against ants?
My dad uses Fun Light (a brand of Light Lemonade), which contains aspartame and acefulfam K, to kill ants. He claims that the human body can't process the artificial sweeteners and they just pass ...
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Does flour or rice make an ant's stomach explode?
As I attempt to kill ants in my yard, I've been reading various claims about how to kill ants without common consumer chemical pesticides like DEET. One claim that I've heard repeatedly is that rice, ...
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Is it unhealthy to live with cockroaches?
There are a number of cockroaches in my wardrobe where I keep my clothes. I have noticed that the cockroaches haven't done any damage to my clothes. I haven't seen the need to get rid of the ...
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Can butterflies break off tree branches?
The are some fir tree forests in Mexico that are reputed to have butterfly populations so dense that their collective weight is sufficient to occasionally break off tree branches.
An example of this ...
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Can the rhinoceros beetle carry 100x its own weight?
Intel have posted a twitter pic depicting a rhinoceros beetle carrying 8 ultrabooks (of an unrecognizable brand) with the tagline:
#FACT The Rhinoceros Beetle can lift up to 100x its own weight. ...
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Are the leaves of bean plants effective for controlling bed bugs?
From the National Geographic article Can We Fake Leaves That Stab Bed Bugs in the Feet?
But in the Balkan countries of southeastern Europe, there’s an old folk
remedy that might be the insects’ ...
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Are ants afraid of chalk and won't cross a chalk line?
Chalk
Keep ants at bay by drawing a line around home entry points. The ants will be repelled by the calcium carbonate in the chalk, which is actually made up of ground-up and compressed shells of ...
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Are ants afraid of the smell of lemon?
From 13 Common Items for Getting Rid of Ants:
Lemons
You don’t need insecticides or ant traps to ant-proof your kitchen. Just give it the lemon treatment. First squirt some lemon juice on door ...
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Is Frontline (fipronil) an effective treatment for cat fleas?
Frontline Spot On (active ingredient fipronil) is advertised as a treatment for cat fleas:
Kills fleas within 24 hours
Kills fleas for up to 5 weeks in cats
My mum recently went to her vet to buy ...
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Can a house spider survive being vacuumed up?
There are a lot of Q&A/forums where it is suggested that it is possible these spiders can survive being vacuumed ("hoovered") up (and in some cases crawl back out the vacuum cleaner later).
Is it ...
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Do wasps and yellow jackets leave pheremones that attract them to return to old nests?
I decided to ask this question based on the following question a user posted on DIY.
https://diy.stackexchange.com/questions/16965/dealing-with-a-wasp-nest
According to the user quoting his local pest ...
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Does a "mosquito line" exist, above which mosquitos do not travel?
Is there any scientific definition or evidence of such a thing as the mosquito line?
My first apartment in Manhattan was on the 25th floor of the Park Row building in the Financial District. The ...
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Are tomatoes carnivorous?
New research shows that [tomatoes] capture and kill small insects with
sticky hairs on their stems and then absorb nutrients through their
roots when the animals decay and fall to the ground.
...
user7920
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Do bees use odor instead of dance to communicate the location of food?
It has long been believed that bees use dance to communicate the location of food amongst each other. If true, this would make bees unique in the insect world, as all other insects are guided by smell....
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Is the smoke from one mosquito coil equal to that of 100 cigarettes?
This article makes the following assertion.
Smoke emitted from one mosquito repellant coil is equivalent to those of 100 cigarettes, thus causing harm to a large number of people in India...
Is ...
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Can cockroaches survive a nuclear war?
I am sure most people will have heard this claim in some form or another:
Cockroaches are so resilient that they will survive the nuclear holocaust.
source
Is this true?
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Is the total biomass of ants roughly equal to the total biomass of humans?
According to About.com
The total biomass of all the ants on Earth is roughly equal to the total biomass of all the people on Earth.
Is the above statement just a myth or its in fact real?
Are ...
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Do "yellow"-light bulbs attract fewer bugs than standard bulbs?
I read a article on eHow which claims that that yellow light-bulbs attract fewer bugs.
Replace outdoor lights with "yellow" bulbs which attract fewer bugs than standard outdoor bulbs.
Is it true?
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Do closed closet doors keep moths out?
Some sites suggest that closed doors can keep moths out. Others report that keeping the closet doors closed does not help with moth control. So, does it?
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Were Love Bugs "Engineered" at the University of Florida?
Today while discussing cleaning cars with a co-worker, he mentioned how much he hated driving in Florida because of "Love Bugs" and stated that the "University of Florida researchers genetically ...
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