Rated X: Sexual Cannibalism!

The Praying Mantis gained its name from the long bent front legs which when held together looks like it is in a praying position. They have a triangular head, long neck and amazingly the mantis can turn its head 180 degrees which allows this insect to scan around.

The praying mantis is usually green or brown and can camouflage well on plants, trees and leaves. The mantis uses their front legs to capture their prey, and have fast refluxes which make it really difficult trying to witness the capturing of their prey.

The praying mantis eats moths, grass hoppers, crickets, flies and other small insects, and as famously known for, will eat their own kind. The female will eat her mate just after or during mating, and YET this does not turn off males from mating.

Researchers have discovered that the male thrust faster after it has been decapitated, and other scientists have found after the males head has been removed and eaten the body can continue to mate for up to eight hours!!!

It is believed that cannibalism during mating boosts female reproduction by 40%!!!

Harlem Shake

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Harems of female lovers!

Biologists from Simon Fraser University have discovered that a species of fast-flying male wasp uses smooth moves to build harems of female lovers; the discovery was made when high speed cameras were used to monitor the behaviour of the tiny parasitic wasps, Ooencyrtus kuvanae.

This species of parasitic wasp grows to about 2mm in length, and lays eggs inside the eggs of the gypsy moth. This moth was introduced into North Amercia from in the early 20th century as a biological control agent for the moths, an invasive species harmful to hardwood trees.

Kelly Ablard the head researcher said “the female wasps emerge from their eggs sexually mature and looking for love. Lusty little buzzers are at the ready. Female wasps mate just once in their four- to six-week lifetimes, and so it is that the wasps’ mating ritual bares a striking resemblance to a nightclub at midnight.

Females of this species only mate once and they mate when they emerge… and the males at this point only really have one opportunity to get a female and mate with her,”

The male species actually hatches from the egg a day before the female, and as he does, he basically just sits and waits.

Kelly Ablard also stated that “certain males in a competitive setting will adopt a type of mating strategy, a mating tactic, that allows them to basically collect, gather and guard a harem of females, which is highly unusual for insects, or invertebrates for that matter.

The male species markes the females with a chemical substance so he can find them later for a few romantic seconds, and deterring other, slower, lovesick suitors.

That female waits for him to come back and mate her later. In the meantime, he runs around and he tags a whole bunch of other females for this harem”

Kelly Albard mentions that some males do mate ‘em as they meet ‘em, but the quicker, more agile males mate with multiple females.

Who would have thought that within the insect world females would perceive and classify well conditioned males as higher quality!

Source

World's Largest Ant Hill - A look inside

Four-hour long erections?

The long awaited blog post has been written! 

My sincere apologies for the delay, cause I know that many have been waiting for the rest of the story! 

So here goes... however I dont know if the rest of the story is what you boys really want to know or not...

Or maybe I shall just keep you in suspense a lil longer.....

ok, ok here goes

Just one single bite from the Brazilian wandering spider also known as  armed spider, banana spider or Phoneutria nigriventer which is native to South and Central America has shown to have a number of side effects, one of them being a 4 hour long erection.

However this is not an ordinary erection, it is a very painful erection *sits back and waits for the womens comments! & it also causes loss of muscle control, severe pain, difficulty breathing and if its victim is not treated with anti-venom, it could lead to death due to oxygen deprivation....some of our facebook fans were correct in predicting that it can cause death.

The good news though is that it is estimated that only 10 humans out of 7,000 have died from its bite.

& the rest of the good news is that this spiders venom is being tested to possibly in the future develop medications for those in which viagra does not work.