INSECTS’ STRENGTH

Wairarapa Times-Age, 11 October 1938, Page 6

INSECTS’ STRENGTH

SOME AMAZING CLAIMS. Strong men’s efforts are puny compared with some of the “strong men” of the insect world. Champion of them all is the beetle, which can lift nearly 900 times its own weight. In othef’l words, w.ere it increased to the size o| a man it would be able to raise 70 ton; with ease. This makes the human, “strong man” look pretty small (saysiW. B. Bolt). ’’ J But the beetle is not the only insect with remarkable muscular strength. bee is as strong, in proportion, as th< average railway engine, while th humble earwig, which takes such a 1c of killing, can move over 500 time its own weight. This means that to equal such,a fea a man would have to draw 18 two-tor cars piled one on top of the other. When it comes to eyesight, howeve, man is even farther behind. A tin; speck of food, which you could scarce!, see if it were at your feet, can be spoj ted by many kinds of birds at a dk tance of a hundred yards. Even moi remarkable is the chameleon, whic can move its eyes independently, an can see in two directions at the sam time. And if you have ever thougl how tired your eyes would become I you could not blink, think of the snakl Snakes never close their eyes —the haven’t any eyelids. Spiders, however, enjoy an unfa • advantage, most varieties having eigl. eyes. Bees, too, have an unusual abii ity. They can see ultra-violet rays, although red is simply black to them. I Here’s another strange thing aboij'• eyes. According to an American scieii • tist, if a bulldog has two eyes of dii. ferent colours this is a sign that it i ; deaf in one ear. i .

Human pride suffers a severe bio’ when one considers that the greates skyscrapers in the world are built b a little creature a quarter of an inc long. Proportionately, a termite hill 50 times as high as the tallest Ne n York skyscraper. And if we coul breed chickens as easily as queen tei mites, eggs would be really cheap! That hard-working insect lays an eg' every second all the year round. It will probably surprise you t learn that if all the insects in ’the worl, were piled in to one side of a giganti pair of scales, and all the other living creatures —birds, beasts, and men-, were piled into the other the insect would easily outweigh them. But thi is not remarkable, perhaps, when w realise that one housefly ha 3,000,000.000,000,000 decendants in season. Insects, birds, and animals can cer tainly do some amazing things. Try t imagine yourself, for instancee, swal lowing a loaf of bread whole. Yet a snake can swallow an egg fiv. times the size of its own head withou breaking the shell. Have you ever lost your way in fog? An eel never loses its way wher answering some mysterious call dNature, it leaves its homo and travel: often part of the way across land, 1 the breeding grounds on the other sid of the Atlantic. This is a journey c thousands of miles —and yet the eel always reach their objective. The never land up at Iceland or down, i the Canaries by mistake. But don’t let these comparison worry you. There is one very good rea son why, with all your physical an instinctive inferiorly to birds, beast: and insects, you —and the rest of man kind—are top dog. That reason isthe human brain.