The neck of dragonflies is very flexible and thin. They can turn their heads 180 degrees!
It costs nothing for them to see what is happening behind their backs and whether there are enemies nearby.
Flying, dragonflies write out such turns that you look. But how do they not break their necks?
For a long time, this remained a mystery to scientists.
German biologist Stanislav Gorb recently found out how these insects manage to avoid trouble on their necks.
It turns out that it's all about the tiny bristles that dot the dragonfly's head and back.
In a moment of danger, the dragonfly throws its head back so that the bristles cling to each other and now their layer protects the neck from damage and shock - softens them.
What insect (the only one of all) is able to turn its head and look "over its shoulder"?
The common praying mantis (lat. Mantis religiosa L.) is a representative of the Praying Mantis suborder of the Cockroach-like order, a large predatory insect with front legs well adapted for grasping food. It reaches 42-52 mm (male) or 48-75 mm (female) in length. The wings are well developed in both the male and the female, but in the latter (according to some scientists) they are used not for flight, but to intimidate prey. Based on specific observations made during scientific works, it was found that the female also uses wings for flight. Abdomen ovoid, rather long. A feature of this type of praying mantis is its widest distribution: it lives throughout southern Europe (south of the 52nd parallel), in Western and Central Asia, Africa, partly South-East Asia and Australia (where it competes with related species). In the Crimea, it is gradually being replaced by the tree praying mantis (Hierodula Tenuidentata). Introduced to the USA. |
Praying mantises are insects with fairly good eyesight, and they notice any disturbance. In addition, praying mantises are the only insects that can look behind their backs.
Most Interesting Facts about insects
The living being with the largest brain in relation to the body is an ant.
The weight of insects that all spiders on Earth eat in a year is more than the total weight of all people living on the planet.
Mosquitoes are attracted to the smell of people who have recently eaten bananas.
The dragonfly lives 24 hours.
Termites grind wood twice as fast for hard rock.
Scorpions can eat nothing for almost two years, and ticks up to 10 years.
Butterflies taste food with their hind legs. And the color of their wings is created by tiny overlapping scales that reflect light.
Ants never sleep. There are almost as many ant species (8800) as there are bird species (9000) in the world.
Dragonflies are the fastest flying insects. The speed of their movement reaches 57 km / h.
The aphid develops into an adult insect from an egg in 6 days and lives for another 4-5 days.
grasshopper blood white color, blue lobster.
Insects are the first living creatures that appeared on Earth, more than 400 million years ago. Since then, they have survived five massive cataclysms and have proven to be more tenacious than tyrannosaurs.
Every year, more people die from bee stings than from snake bites.
Insects annually devour 25 - 30% of the world crop.
There are more than 20,000 tiny lenses in the eye of a dragonfly, which form, like pieces of a mosaic, a multifaceted (faceted) surface.
As analysis of the stomach contents of female mosquitoes caught around settlements, 80% of these insects feed on the blood of domestic animals.
One bee family harvests up to 150 kg of honey during the summer.
The bee has two stomachs - one for honey, the other for food.
Spider-spiders eat their web every morning, and then build it again.
In a lifetime, a bee produces 1/12 of a teaspoon of honey.
A female cockroach can lay more than two million eggs in a year. In addition, a cockroach can live for nine days without a head.
There are about 35,000 known species of spiders, and new ones are being discovered all the time.
Insects are a food rich in protein, carbohydrates, vitamins and minerals. In Thailand, they are considered a delicacy, where fried crickets and locusts are popular.
The largest moth in the world - Attacus Altas. With a wingspan of 30 cm, it is often mistaken for a bird.
In Russia, grasshoppers were called dragonflies.
Every day, the bees of our planet fertilize 3 trillion flowers and produce 3,000 tons of honey.
Insects are one of the oldest living beings, they appeared on Earth more than 400 million years ago. Tiny living creatures are so hardy that they can survive any cataclysms. Even if humanity destroys itself, it is unlikely that it will succeed in eradicating insects from the world.
There are more than a million species of insects in the world. That's more than all other animal species combined! And every year, entomologists discover another 8,000 species of insects.
Dragonflies were the first creatures to fly into the air. It happened 320 million years ago, and their wings were then equal in length to the wings of a modern seagull.
Modern dragonflies sit in a cocoon for 2 years, after which they hatch, immediately begin to multiply, and then die. Some species do not even have a mouth, and males have enough energy for 30 minutes of flight. The females have a little more. Other species are able to reach speeds of 65 km / h.
The living being with the largest brain in relation to the body is the ant.
The largest beetle in the world is considered to be a titan lumberjack, reaching sizes up to 17 centimeters.
Tiny stinging insects, biting midges, flap their wings at an incredible speed - 62,760 times per minute.
The dung beetle is capable of moving a weight that exceeds its mass by 90 times. The most powerful animals in the world, in proportion to their size, are large beetles of the scarab family, living mainly in the tropics.
An aphid measuring 0.5 millimeters can jump in such a way that if you increase it to the size of a person, it will jump over the Eiffel Tower.
Locusts live underground for 17 years. Then all the individuals crawl out on the same day and breed. There may be up to a million on an acre of land at this time.
Insects very accurately determine the temperature of the environment. Thermoreceptors are located either in the antennae or on the legs. With the help of thermoreceptor antennas, insects very accurately determine the source of heat and can judge the presence and location of the victim. Moreover, the mosquito will continue to change the position of the body until both of its antennas receive the same amount of heat. Large bloodsuckers (bugs) use only one antenna to find the victim - turning it in different directions.
The mosquito flies to heat. More bite people with more high temperature body. The skin of a walking or running person is warmer than a sitting or standing one.
A monument to the moth has been erected in Australia. In the 1920s, the South American cactus spread catastrophically here, and the only one who was able to cope with it was the imported Argentine cactus moth - natural enemy plants.
It has long been known that cockroaches can live decapitated for several weeks. And perhaps this is all due to the fact that the blood circulation process of the cockroach is not controlled by the brain, it breathes through tiny holes that are located throughout the body, and thanks to the already eaten insects can live without food for a long time.
Termites are made from clay tall towers where millions of insects find shelter. Each tower has a central chimney through which warm air. Thus, the termite room is cooled and ventilated.
Mayan warriors used hornet nests (“hornet bombs”) as throwing weapons to create panic in the ranks of the enemy.
Ants never sleep. There are almost as many ant species (8800) as there are bird species (9000) in the world.
Ticks are able not to eat up to 10 years, patiently waiting on the grass and branches of shrubs for a living creature passing by.
Caterpillars are the children of butterflies. In butterflies, as in many other insects, in the process of development, the appearance. From an egg, they turn into a caterpillar, then into a chrysalis, and then into a butterfly. This process of transformation from larva to pupa to adult is called metamorphosis.
Not all insects change their appearance during development. Baby scale insects, barely hatched from the egg, look the same as their parents, they just get bigger and bigger until they have wings.
Bombardier beetles defend themselves against predators by shooting a mixture of toxic substances heated to boiling point from special glands in their rear. In at least one species, this mixture erupts in the form of a pulsating jet. Such complex device The beetle is often cited by creationists as evidence that this system cannot have evolved.
Grasshopper blood is white, lobster blood is blue.
Water striders are so light that they can glide across the surface of a pond. At the tips of their legs they have hair brushes, which help them not to drown.
The wasp lays its larvae in living butterfly caterpillars. These butterfly caterpillars, when they grow up, become 800 times heavier than when they hatched. Those in which the larvae, of course, do not grow, since the larvae eat them from the inside, then entangle the skin with silk, spend 2 weeks in a cocoon, and hatch as adult wasps.
The words bull and bee are the same root. The fact is that in the works of ancient Russian literature the word bee was written as “bechela”. alternation vowels is explained by the origin of both sounds from one Indo-European sound. If we recall the dialect verb to roar, which means “roar, buzz, buzz” and is etymologically related to the words bee, insect and bull, it becomes clear what it was like general meaning of these nouns - producing a certain sound.
Every year, more people die from bee stings than from snake bites.
Water beetles living in lakes and ponds are able to breathe underwater.
Ants communicate using smells - their glands produce pheromones in different concentrations for different messages. When an ant dies, it is treated as though it were alive for a few more days, until the smell of decomposition products interrupts the pheromones. If a living ant is lubricated with substances that are part of the smell of decomposition, then it will certainly be taken to the cemetery, and will be taken again, no matter how much it returns from there.
Weaver ants build their homes from leaves. Some ants hold the edges of the leaves, while others cover them with glue. It is secreted by larvae, which goosebumps wear, holding in their jaws.
Insects orient themselves in flight around the world. They fix the source - the Sun or the Moon - and maintain a constant angle between it and their course, taking a position in which the rays always illuminate the same side. However, if the rays from the heavenly bodies are almost parallel, then from artificial source rays of light diverge radially. And when the insect chooses a lamp for its course, it moves in a spiral, gradually approaching it.
Ants have their own "animal husbandry" - they breed aphids that suck juice from plants and excrete its excess in the form of droplets enriched with sugar. The aphid sprays such “milk” directly into the mouth of the ant after it massages its abdomen with its antennae. For the "herd" of aphids, ants build shelters that protect them from bad weather and attacks from other insectivores.
Insects are a food rich in protein, carbohydrates, vitamins and minerals. In Thailand, they are considered a delicacy, where fried crickets and locusts are popular.
Tsetse flies attack any moving warm object, even a car. An exception is the zebra, which the fly perceives as just a flicker of black and white stripes.
Pusher flies, like many other insects, have a mating ritual: before mating, the male presents the insect he has caught to the female. And while she eats it, the male can fertilize the female without fear. In one of the North American species, the male does not just give an insect, but wraps it in a beautiful white ball. And the males of the Mauritanian pusher weave a fluttering veil, into which something edible is not even always woven.
In many species of fireflies, only the males fly and glow. Females are wingless and worm-like, similar to larvae.
Larvae of blowflies - maggots - are useful not only for fishing. They are used in many medical centers Europe and the USA for cleaning wounds from dead tissue and suppuration. The larvae eat such places, leaving the wound clean.
The fire borer beetle needs a forest fire to reproduce. When he finds burnt wood, he lays his eggs there. The advantage of this method is that at this moment his natural enemies cannot interfere with him, since they themselves are saved from the fire. And to detect a fire at a distance of several kilometers, this beetle has a miniature infrared receptor.
In nature, there are moths that make up for fluid losses by sucking out tears from sleeping animals. So, the Madagascar moth drinks tears from birds at night, and one butterfly from the scoop family - from crocodiles, deer and other large animals.
If a fire ant falls into water, it will drown in a few hours. However, if many fire ants from one colony are washed into the water, they form a single raft from their bodies - each insect is hooked by its jaws on the limbs of another. This raft has no slots, bends well and can stay afloat for weeks.
In Russia, grasshoppers were called dragonflies.
Scorpions can eat nothing for almost two years, and ticks for up to 10 years.
A female cockroach can lay more than two million eggs in a year. In addition, a cockroach can live for nine days without a head.
Analysis of the contents of the stomachs of female mosquitoes caught around settlements shows that 80% of these insects feed on the blood of domestic animals.
The praying mantis is the only insect that can turn its head.
The weight of insects that all spiders on Earth eat in a year is more than the total weight of all people living on the planet.
Mosquitoes are attracted to the smell of people who have recently eaten bananas.
If you turn on some kind of furious music for termites - for example, heavy metal - they will begin to bite into the tree twice as fast.
The aphid develops into an adult insect from an egg in 6 days and lives for another 4-5 days.
Insects annually eat 25-30% of the world's crop.
In the eye of a dragonfly, there are more than 20 thousand tiny lenses that form, like pieces of a mosaic, a multifaceted (faceted) surface.
The bee has two stomachs - one for honey, the other for food.
Spider-spiders eat their web every morning, and then build it again.
Did you know that termites have such strong house that it can only be destroyed with dynamite; stick insects grow the size of a cat; Are there wasps that lay eggs in pots?
But did you know that insects - beetles, ants and all the rest - have three pairs of legs, that is, there are six in total?
The body of insects is divided into three parts: head, thorax and abdomen. The hard outer shell does not allow water to enter the body and protects the soft internal organs.
Why don't flying insects die in a tropical downpour? Falling, each raindrop creates a light breeze, which blows insects aside. It turns out that they balance between the drops.
Butterfly wings are covered with rows of scales that lie like tiles on a roof. Moreover, each flake is no larger than a speck of dust.
Dragonflies and mayflies start their lives in the water. At this stage of development, their larvae are called nymphs. The larvae can attack fish fry and tadpoles that are larger than themselves.
Butterfly taste buds are located on the hind legs. This method evaluates the taste of food and some other insects.
A bee sees the world around it not with two, but with five eyes at once: two are located in front, three are on the “crown”. But crickets have ears on their front legs.
If you have a cricket in your house, you don't really need a thermometer. Count how many times the insect chirped in a minute and divide this number by two. Add nine to the resulting and divide in half again. Get the exact air temperature in Celsius. No kidding.
A third of all insects are not "vegetarians": they eat their own kind, drink someone's blood or feed on carrion. But there are still more hunters among them than lovers of "waste".
Insects are very nutritious: they contain proteins, minerals, vitamins and carbohydrates necessary for humans. So if you're lost in the woods and can't get yourself a meal, take a closer look at what's crawling and flying around.
Insects are one of the most unexplored animals. Entomologists believe that at least 5,000,000 of their species have not yet been discovered. The writer Vladimir Nabokov, who was fond of entomology and, in particular, butterflies, himself enriched science with several types of winged beauties.
The fly usually does not fly far from the place where it was born. But if it blows strong wind, it can be carried for tens of kilometers.
People who see a hummingbird for the first time often mistake it for a large insect. Meanwhile, the world has a butterfly so large sizes that she looks like a bird. This is an atlas peacock-eye, leading an active lifestyle at night and having a wingspan of more than 30 centimeters.
Spiders look like insects, but they are not. Arachnids belong to a separate class of animals.
The female spider of the amarabia species is an example of the highest self-sacrifice, because after birth, the cubs eat their own mother with appetite.
They could be cited as an example of Sisyphean spiders theridion: after birth, they remain with their mother. First they eat what she has prepared for them, then they themselves help to get her food. They accompany the parent until her death, and then ... they also eat her and go about their business.
But family relationships the imperial scorpions are very similar to ours: adult children do not always leave their father's house. Several generations of the same family can live side by side, tolerate each other and go hunting together.
Flies are flying rockets. Try to catch this buzzing "plane" with your bare hands - you are unlikely to succeed. The speed of an ordinary fly is 6.5 km / h, but the horsefly flies almost four times faster - 22.4 km / h. In addition, flies have an amazing reaction: they dodge danger with lightning speed and remain safe and sound.
A flea is a jumping wire cutter. The jump length of this bloodsucker insect is 33 centimeters. If you translate the value in relation to a person, then it will be equal to 213 meters! Do you know at least one athlete who can overcome such a distance in one jump? That's right - there is no such thing, because people can’t do it, and a flea is easy.
The giant grasshopper, caught on the border of Malaysia and Thailand, broke all records not only in size (its length was 25.5 cm), but also in long jumps. One of his jumps was more than 4.5 meters.
Bees and wasps are real chemical laboratories. No - this is not a joke, it's just that bee venom consists exclusively of acids, but the wasp is the producer of an alkaline poisonous substance.
If an ordinary forest ant lives for about a year, then under laboratory conditions, these insects sometimes live up to 20 years!
A spider that lives in the Namib desert escapes its enemies by rolling into a hole. He digs these holes for himself. When it is attacked by wasps, it abruptly rushes from the slope of the pit and rolls like a wheel, while its speed is 1 m / s.
Healer ants from the Dorilyus genus can not only sting, but also heal wounds, connecting their edges with their powerful jaws. That's why locals are widely used in medicine.
Bumblebees on flowers can be in danger. Female wasps use bumblebees as a source of food for their offspring. The rider wasp flies up to the bumblebee, sits on top of it, pierces its sharp ovipositor and lays several dozen eggs inside the body.
The larvae hatched from the eggs begin to feed on their prey from the inside. Little killers secrete special substances that make the bumblebee burrow into the ground before death.
Underground, the bumblebee stays fresh longer. In the body of a dead bumblebee, the larvae of the rider will have to spend the whole winter, and in the spring they turn into adults.
Bumblebees are among the most cold-resistant insects and can live even in harsh northern conditions. Bumblebees can be found in Greenland, Chukotka and Alaska. Why are bumblebees so cold hardy? It turns out that their body temperature exceeds the air temperature by 20-30 degrees and averages 40 degrees. This effect is achieved through the work of the pectoral muscles.
By using body lice managed to find out when a person began to wear clothes (about 170,000 years ago).
"Ladybug" has a similar name in many countries. For example, in Israel it is "Moses' cow".
Hello, friends!
Today I am answering the question of Lyovushka, which was sent by his mother, Katya, the author of the Dom Les blog. It has been in my reserve for a long time, and the time has come to discover secrets, the bell is ringing in a magical meadow. Turn new fairy tale made with great love for the living.Elephant: Friends, I declare the BioTOP meeting open!
kaffir raven: BioTOP!
Meerkat scurries across the clearing, climbs onto a pebble and peers into the distance.
Cheetah: Dear Meerkat, what are you looking for there?
Meerkat: A giraffe should come to visit us today! The plane from Madagascar has long since arrived, and it should have been in place for a long time.
Owl: You can see such a tower a mile away. We won't miss the giraffe.
orangutan: It's strange that the giraffe comes to us from Madagascar. Are they found there?
someone's voice: Only there they are found!
The eyes of those present went up. And they saw a bug of the strangest kind in the branches of a tree.
Octopus(looking at the beetle in a monocle): Hello, dear. And who exactly will you be?
Bug: Hello to you! Well, how? They invited themselves. I flew to you from Madagascar!
kaffir raven: So we were waiting for the giraffe!
Bug: Who do you think I am?
beetle giraffe
Dragonfly(eyes bulging): Are you a giraffe?
Bug(going down and bowing): Yes sir. Weevil - giraffe at your service!
Owl: So they lie that insects do not have a neck. Look how long this weevil has!
beetle giraffe: What you take for the neck is actually my head.
Dragonfly (looking at the head of the weevil with all eyes): Can't be!
Beetle Giraffe (sang):
SONG OF THE GIRAFFE BEETLE
Madagascar patriot -
I only live there.
Dihatanthera grows there
I just chew it!
I'm a weevil, Giraffe Beetle!
I am the miracle of miracles.
Not just a beetle, but a pipe head,
Builder - leaf cutter.
I'm a pipe weevil
A giant of its kind!
Dihatanthera leaf entails -
I'll roll it up into a tube.
A cradle will come out of the tube,
For a baby bug.
And the table and shelter - his bed,
And a leaf fortress.
When up to an adult beetle,
Our little one will ripen
The mother will cut the side of the leaf,
And he will hang up.
Meerkat: It turns out that your head turned into a pipe?
beetle giraffe: Yes, the head is extended into the rostrum. Such an elongated design, only males have it. Only beetles with very long rostrums can marry.
Owl: And why is that?
Dragonfly(rolls her eyes dreamily): You fight on them like knights with swords, and the winner gets the lady?
beetle giraffe: Not without it. The rostrum helps a lot in dueling. But the main thing is not this!
Meerkat: What about? The winner gets a lady.
Beetle Giraffe: It is the males who build living cradles, carefully cutting the leaf, and the females lay only one egg in such a cradle. And you can't roll a good pipe without a flexible head. And from a bad tube, a bug will not come out.
angler: Oh, and I saw similar tubes on our birch last year!
Orangutan: They were rolled up by a weevil - a birch tube-roller! But, of course, he does not have such a luxurious neck as the Giraffe Beetle.That is, not necks, but rostrums, I wanted to say. Yes, and he did not come out with a sprout of 3-4 millimeters.
beetle giraffe: I am one of the largest weevils, I can grow up to 2.5 centimeters.
Meerkat: And show how you make a tube of leaves. I also want to learn how to roll a tube from a leaf.
beetle giraffe: Oh, I'm afraid I won't be able to teach. Dihatantera trees do not grow here, and I only roll the leaves into a tube.
orangutan: Don't be upset, dear Meerkat! We can try to make a model of the tube that the birch tube roll rolls. I have a description of the process from Igor Akimushkin's book. Now I'll bring the book!
How a tube maker rolls a tube from a sheet
monkey: Hooray! Now let's play pipe-roller!
beetle giraffe: It will be very interesting to find out how colleagues fold the sheet.
The Orang-utan returned with a book in his hands. And read the description.
"On a warm spring day, a female tubeworm climbs a birch tree and finds a soft leaf. On its upper surface, retreating slightly to the right of the petiole, the beetle bites into the leaf with sharp jaws and, backing away, leads the first cut from here to the vein. It does not lead directly, but along a curved S -shaped line.Slightly bites the middle vein and passes to the left half of the leaf.Again, a curved incision leads from the edge to the vein, but it is less curved than the first.
Having finished it, he returns to the starting point, again to the right half of the sheet. It crawls to its lower surface and, quickly moving its legs, folds the right half of the leaf into a narrow cone of five to seven tight turns. Then, in the same way, the insect folds the left half of the leaf into a tube. But it turns it in the opposite direction, around an already twisted cone. It turns out a dense green case.
I. Akimushkin "Even the crocodile has friends"Octopus: It would be great to try to make such a pipe on real birch leaves.
orangutan: A paper model will do. It will look more visible on it. Cut out the leaf. Dear Cancer, work as a weevil and make cuts along the dotted line, not reaching the vein.
Crayfishcut the leaf with claws: Here!
orangutan: Excellent! And now, dear Meerkat, it's your turn. Fold the part of the leaflet where the cutout is deeper into a tube away from you.
Meerkat: And it turns out not easy! The paper is about to unfold!
Octopus: This is not surprising, dear Meerkat. To reduce the resistance of the sheet, the bugs, before folding the sheet, wither it. Then the tube is tight, and does not unfold. And with paper, such a trick will not work.
orangutan: And now, dear Monkey, we need your fingers. Twist the other half of the sheet around the tube. Carefully wind up under the carved wings!
monkey: I almost tore off a vein when I twisted it!
orangutan: In such a tube, the beetle will lay its eggs, and close the bag, tucking the top of the leaf inside the tube. Like this!
The orangutan sealed the bag and placed it on a tree.
Cheetah: But let me, Beetle Giraffe! How does your head move if there is no neck?
orangutan: I think we can demonstrate this with the help of the model.
Biomodeling of the cervical membrane of insects
1 . Let's take plastic bottle, adhesive tape, scissors. As you remember, the body of insects is dressed on the outside with a chitinous hard cover, as if in knightly armor. Chitin cannot stretch at all, like plastic.
3 . We connect the parts with adhesive tape. What did we get? There is mobility, but it is not enough. In many insects, just such a connection. The edges of the segments become thinner. A thinner layer bends better.
4 . Is it possible to somehow increase the mobility of the parts? How can they be changed so that there is not much damage to strength?
5 . Consider various ways models. For example, you can increase the distance due to the length of the tape. Then the head can twist and turn well. But there is a minus, it is easy to lose your head. When you start twisting the two parts, you will feel it. The head lacks support.
6 . And if you make special protrusions to which the tape will be attached? Strength will increase significantly. That's what nature did. Thickenings appeared on the sides and edges of the cervical membrane - cervical sclerites. They can be triangular, or in the form of a printed letter "G". Cut out the protrusions from the bottle, and try to connect them with tape.
Orangutan: The most mobile cervical membrane in predatory insects. In praying mantises and wasps. Our Dragonfly also has a very mobile head.
Octopus: I remember that US scientists conducted experiments, studying the strength of the cervical membrane in ants. It turned out that when lifting a load, the main pressure falls on the neck of the ant, it is able to withstand stretching 350 times greater than the ant itself. And the ant can lift 5,000 times more weight than it weighs itself, thanks to the special structure of the connection.
orangutan: When they looked under the membrane with a microscope, did they see the tubercles and the hairs connecting them?
Octopus: Exactly! And they decided to make space mini robots based on the discovery.
Do insects have a neck?
Crayfish: I don't understand why insects don't have a neck, if they have one, in the form of a membrane connection!
Orangutan: The point is, what is the origin of the membrane. If it were from a separate segment, or better from several segments, it would receive the status of the cervical region. And so - these are just the thinned edges of the head and chest.
Crayfish: I don’t have a neck at all, and I don’t even have a head, but there is only a cephalothorax.
And Cancer sobbed.
anglerfish: Do not be upset colleague! Neck in the animal world - great luxury. I don't have a neck either.
Octopus A: And I don't.
Dragonfly: And I have.
beetle giraffe: And I have.
anglerfish: Only terrestrial vertebrates have a neck. A frog, for example, has only one vertebra in its neck. She can only nod and agree with everything like a Chinese bobblehead.
Crayfish(cheered up): The frog found a problem on its neck!
anglerfish(in a nasty voice): Do you want us to make chops from your paws?
Crayfish(raising claw): And she nods. Well, it's not! I'm not going to nod to anyone!
Why do you need a neck?
monkey: Yes, what did you do? No neck, no neck! Think! Why is she needed? Although, no, you need it. I wear beads on it.Owl: Oh, Monkey! The head can turn with the help of the neck, and you will see everything, whether there is a predator behind, on the side, or where the prey, food is. Without a neck, you couldn’t raise your head or lower it.
And the Owl turned her head 270 degrees. The monkey turned her head in response.
monkey: Strange, I can't do that!
Owl: So I have 14 vertebrae in my neck, against your 7. And they are arranged differently. And my carotid artery is not on the side, but in front, and expands under the beak, so the vessels are not pinched. I can turn my head.
Meerkat: And why does the frog only nod up and down, but I can look left and right?
orangutan: This is because mammals, birds, and beasts have a second vertebra,called epistropheus. Hea special structure with a tooth, around which the first ATLANT vertebra can rotate. The tooth is like a pin at the pyramid, and the atlas is like a wheel with a recess on the side for this pin. Therefore, everyone who has an epistrophy can turn his head.
Elephant(circling head): How interesting! But who has the longest neck? At the giraffe?
Who has the longest neck?
Octopus: And it will depend on how we will measure, dear Chairman. In centimeters, or in vertebrae.
Elephant: In centimeters. A very handy measurement.
Octopus: If from the living .... Then the giraffe - it has a neck length of 3 meters. Among birds, flamingos are probably 90 cm. But the longest neck was in the extinct Jurassic dinosaur mamenchisaurus - 15 meters out of its 22 meters in length.
Meerkat: And if you measure in the vertebrae?
Octopus: A giraffe, like you, dear Meerkat, has only 7 cervical vertebrae. All mammals have 7 cervical vertebrae and the Monkey, Cheetah, Sperm Whale, Elephant, Orangutan and Man. Only the manatee has 6 of them, but sloths have from 5 to 10, depending on the species.
monkey(curling fingers): Wow! It turns out that the giraffe has a vertebra almost half a meter in size! Does a dinosaur also have 7 vertebrae in its neck? Then, it turns out, each vertebra was 2 meters?
Octopus: I forgot. It looks like there were more calls. But I have notes - here. I wrote with all the tentacles at once, but there are arrows there. And you can see and count.
The monkey grabbed the paper and began to trace it with her finger. You can also find out the number of cervical vertebrae in various animals. And calculate what approximate size vertebrae was in Mamenchisaurus.
Elephant:I think that the agenda for today has been exhausted. I announce the closing of the meeting!
kaffir raven: BioTOP! Biotope!
And a new character appeared on the meadow. I'll show it to you. And you try to guess who it is. His story is yet to come. But to find out what happened next, we need new questions from your whys.
