Which Insects Suck Through Straws?

            There are many insects, which have straws for sucking up the liquids. The insects, which have straws, are moths and butterflies. In the figure, an insect is sucking blood.

A Mosquito Sucking

            Insects have suck up liquids have mouths shaped like long tubes. Insects that suck include aphids, which have a sharp tube for piercing the stems of plants ad sucking out sap. Mosquitoes pierce our skin to suck up the blood. A housefly has a tube with a sponge-like organ at the end for sucking up liquid.

            In biological language, these straws are called a proboscis. Insects that drink nectar form flowers have the best straws. A butterfly normally keeps its long proboscis coiled up, only extending it when it intends to use it. The convolvulus hawk moth has a straw 14 centimeters long for reaching deep into certain kinds of flower. One type of South American moth has a proboscis that is 30 centimeters long.

Which Insects Swim Upside Down?

            Did you know that some kinds of insects can swim on their backs? There are certain peculiar types of bugs’ called back swimmers greater water boatman that swim upside down. These back swimmers are also called boat bugs. Although they spend most of their lives in water, they are able to fly long distances. These insects are small, usually 3 to 17 millimeters 0.13 to 0.63 inch in length. Instead of wings, they use their legs to swim. They swim on their backs and make use of their hid legs to paddle through the water. These flat paddles are ideal for swimming, and re often made even more efficient by a fringe of hair, which runs down each side. This provides a broader surface to push the water. The insect uses its short front legs for holding its prey.

Backswimmers

            Backswimmers enclose a bubble of air between their wings and body. This air s used for breathing when they are underwater. This lets them stay underwater for as long as six hours. In winters, backswimmers bury themselves in the mud at the bottom of a pond or stream.

            They have sharp beaks, which they use for stabbing fish and other small water animals and suck out their juices as food. Backswimmers sometimes bite human beings.

            These creatures belong to Notonectidae family, which has in all about 200 species. They are generally found all over the world. They cause great harm to fishes and tadpoles. They deposit their eggs on the tissues of pond vegetation.

Which Fish Spits at Insects?

            Fishes are the most numerous organisms among the vertebrates and they number more than 30, 000, which is more than all the other back boned animals put together. Each group has its own way of acquiring food. The archer fish spits pellets of water to shoots down insects sitting on overhanging plants. Its aim is quite accurate and it can easily dislodge a fly or beetle about four feet away so that it falls into the water. The archer-fish then dashes towards the insect and eats it.

Archer Fish Spits Insects

            It is interesting to know how this fish is able to direct the jet of water exactly at the intended target over four feet away. The roof of its mouth forms a long groove. If the fish suddenly closes its gill covers, water is forced from the gill chamber into the mouth. At the same time, the tongue is raised, so the groove becomes a long tube from which the water squirts in a jet. Even more remarkable, it has adapted to the refractive index-caused  perspective distortion air and water have different indices of refraction; this means that an insect is not where it appears to be, when see form underwater! If you have seen a spoon bending in glass tumbler of water, you know why it is such a feat for the archerfish to shoot insects down form underwater, you to shoot insects down from underwater. They improve their chances of a kill by swimming as directly under the prey as possible, so that the distortion is at a minimum.

            The archerfish is a fresh water fish, and belongs to the family toxobidae. It is found in India and Indonesia. It got its name from the manner in which it captures its prey. Archerfish can also live in seawater. Toxotese jaculator is the most commonly known fish of this family. It can grow up to 18 cm in length. These fishes generally feed on insects.