Why Insects Have a Hard Time

07/06/2011 17:51

You probably think you are having a hard time, keeping up payments on your mortgage, looking after the kids and meeting all the deadlines. While all of these are difficult, spare a thought for insects. While they do not have to worry about bills or need to remember their mother in laws birthday, they have an enormous variety of predators after them, including reptiles, birds, amphibians, mammals and even carnivorous plants, not to mention many of their own kind. In fact, being an insect is so deadly and dangerous that only about ten to twenty percent even make it to adulthood, with about fifty percent of this mortality rate due to predation.

To try to avoid being killed and eaten, many insects have developed complex defence mechanisms. Some have camouflaging, allowing them to blend into the background. Others actually use mimicry, of which there are two forms. In Batesian mimicry, an insect will look like another one that is poisonous, thus leading predators to think that it too is poisonous. Mullerian mimicry is when a number of species all adopt a colour that indicates they have the same bad taste or poisonous result. Others use chemical defences, often secreted onto the exoskeleton.

So next time you are worried about your life, remember the poor insect, attacked from every angle.

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