Facts about animal parasites. Interesting facts about human parasites. Anthelmintics - in every home

Ecology

For example, there are so-called "flea circuses", in which insects, like trained animals, show different numbers such as playing with a ball, drawing cards, spinning a wheel, playing musical instruments.

Although mistletoe is poisonous to humans, if eaten, its leaves and fruits are used to make Croatian brandy - bisca. In winter, when there is little food, mistletoe is used as food for cattle. Deer, elk, porcupines and squirrels survive in hungry winters thanks to the mistletoe. Indeed, so many living creatures depend on the mistletoe that this plant has acquired important ecological importance.

Mistletoe berries can be used for bird glue production, a viscous sticky substance on the branches that helps to trap birds. IN Ancient Greece and Rome bird glue was used for catching blackbirds which were considered a delicacy.

Red mites

Red mites have a plump, fluffy, cushion-like body and attention-grabbing red color. As you might guess, with such a charming appearance, these mites have a rather disgusting taste.

Extracts from the body of ticks are used in oriental medicine for treatment male infertility and paralysis. Scientific research showed that various body parts of red beetle mites have antifungal and antibacterial properties.

Wasp of the Ichneumonidae family

"Ichnemon" in Greek means hunter stalking wild animals. This name is most suitable for a wasp from another family - Braconids. Interesting, but can be trained to identify many subtle odors such as the smell of explosives or drugs. Surprisingly, these creatures learn much faster and easier than bloodhounds!

oak gall- an ink nut that is created by wasp larvae gall washer. Historically, it has been used to make ink. The ink is made by adding iron to tannic acid solution, which is isolated from oak gall.

Such ink was standardly used for writing and drawing in Europe. 5th to 19th century!

The queens of these ants after the mating flight may end up in the nest of carpenter ants and expel the queen living there.

These ants that are named "medical ants", were used in China and Taiwan as ingredients for drugs for thousands of years. Studies show that extracts from the body of ants have strong analgesic and anti-inflammatory effects.

Cochineal

cochineal mealybug- an insect that lives on prickly pear cacti. A feature of this insect is that it is processed for the production of cochineal dye.

Cochineal exports were second only to silver in the Spanish colonies of the New World. Spain went through a major financial crisis when synthetic dyes were invented because most of the cochineal factories went bankrupt.

Today, the production of natural dyes is reviving, and interest in cochineal is rising again, as it is an excellent natural substitute for food coloring based on coal or gasoline by-products.

The tinder fungus can be used to start a fire, as well as to produce a felt-like material. tinder. This material, in turn, is used for making hats.

Wax moth caterpillars

In captivity, wax moth caterpillars feed on cereal grains, bran, and honey. They are usually grown as food for fish, lizards and birds. For lizards, for example, these fat caterpillars are a real treat and something like our candy.

By the way, wax moth caterpillars even humans eat. When fried, they are somewhat reminiscent of mushrooms and pine nuts.

One of these plants is mistletoe. To ensure its existence, mistletoe lets special suckers deep into the woody tissues of the host plant on which it settled.

The same type of mistletoe can settle on various trees, but there are subspecies adapted only to conifers or only to hardwoods. As soon as a sprout of pine mistletoe begins its destructive activity on a pear, the tissues of the pear become dead and the mistletoe dies. But if the seeds of pear mistletoe got on the pear, then they will take root. Mistletoe lives on a pear from twenty to fifty years, sometimes in the end the pear dies, but not always.

A bush of mistletoe on a pear (comb-shaped suction cups of mistletoe

In the European part of Russia, and especially in the deserts, there is another parasite - broomrape. Desert broomrape species parasitize roots saxaul, pulling out from its roots not only water and mineral salts, but also organic substances. Once near the roots of the future host, miniature broomrape seeds germinate and take root in them. The broomrape grows rapidly, stretching out above the soil surface in the form of fatty inflorescences. Broomrape (other species) also parasitizes on agricultural crops - clover, alfalfa and many others.

The incubation period of lice and nits is not a stable value, since it depends on a number of factors, including temperature environment. On average, this period is 3 weeks.

Lice begin to bite the host immediately after infestation, as they require food every 2–4 hours. The bites of several insects rarely cause discomfort, since their saliva contains an anesthetic component.

Obvious and permanent signs of pediculosis begin to appear after 3-4 weeks. During this time, it manages to grow up to 100 nymphs - this period is called the incubation period. In warm climates, insects grow and multiply faster: tangible symptoms of the disease can appear as early as 16-18 days.

How does the disease manifest itself? Main symptoms:

Lice breeding: details about nits and nymphs

There is no larval stage in the stage of development of lice - immature nymphs differ from adults only in size, and immediately after the end of the third molt they begin to feed and breed.

A louse egg and a nit are not quite identical concepts - a nit consists of an egg and a sticky secret with which it is kept on the hair.

head lice

Milestones of development

The process of transformation of nits into an adult in body lice at an ambient temperature of 25 degrees Celsius is 2 weeks, at a temperature of 30 degrees - 7-10 days.

Methods of dealing with nits

In the treatment of pediculosis, various means and methods are used, but the most effective is the complete removal of hair - lice cannot be fixed on smooth skin, fall, and begin to look for a new host. After using any drug, be sure to carefully comb out the strands.

Before applying an anti-pediculosis drug, it is advisable not to wash your hair with ordinary shampoos - the products create a thin protective film on the strands and skin, which prevents the penetration of the active substances of the drug.

Nits have a thick protective shell, stick firmly to the hair, so getting rid of them even with the most modern insecticides will not work. The only method of struggle is to thoroughly comb out the hair with a special comb.

Folk remedies

Due to the low cost, rare allergic reactions, many people prefer to treat pediculosis with folk remedies.

Everything you wanted to know about lice, including information about the incubation period in the video:

These methods are quite effective, but there is one significant drawback - it is enough to apply special preparations 1-2 times, unconventional methods will have to be used every day for 5-7 days.

Simple Recipes:

1. Mix kerosene with any vegetable oil in a ratio of 1:10, treat the hair with a solution, cover the head with a plastic bag and a scarf. Keep the product for at least 2 hours, if there is no discomfort, you can leave it overnight.
2. Dilute table vinegar to a concentration of 3%, add 45 g of salt to 200 ml of the solution, mix, add 5 ml of medical alcohol. Apply the product to clean, damp strands. Within 48 hours, regularly moisten the hair with medicine, after 2 days wash the head, comb out the curls.
3. Grind black cumin seeds in a mortar, mix with an equal amount of apple cider vinegar, treat the skin and hair with a solution, stand in the sun for 20-30 minutes, wash the strands in the usual way.

Cognitive and most complete information about children's pediculosis in the video of the School of Dr. Komarovsky:

To avoid infection with lice, it is necessary to regularly examine the head of the child, carefully comb the hair every day, avoid mass gatherings of people, do not use other people's things, do not give your hairbrushes and hats to strangers.

After some time, the sporocyst germinates, its branches penetrate into the head of the snail, and then into its tentacles, where, thickening, they form peculiar blades that have a bright color: their body is girded with white and green stripes, and the top is painted in a bright cinnabar color. Moreover, the tentacles, like miniature hearts, begin to pulsate, accurately signaling their presence. Naturally, the birds begin to eat the bright tentacles of the snail with pleasure, swallowing at the same time the mature branches of sporocysts, which contain a huge number of young flukes.

So original way leukochloridium and penetrates the final host, who mistook it for a good meal.

It turns out that the hairy changes the behavior of its owner with the help of special proteins produced by it, which directly and indirectly affect the structure nervous system grasshopper. Moreover, these proteins affect precisely the orientation of the insect in space.

Living in the tropical forests of Central America, the spider Plesiometa argyra weaves, as it should be for spiders, the thinnest and geometrically impeccable webs. But sometimes, instead of a precisely calculated pattern, he creates a small and shapeless, but very strong weave of threads, and then dies after that.

It turned out that the spider changes its behavior after being bitten by a wasp larva, which then uses this weave as an air platform to weave its cocoon. When the platform is built, the larva injects another poison into the spider, this time a deadly one, and devours it.

A very unusual behavior is characteristic of the ichneumon wasp of the genus Glyptapanteles. This wasp first paralyzes the moth caterpillar Thyrinteina leucocerae and, while it remains motionless, calmly lays about 80 eggs in its body. Together with them, she infects the caterpillar with special toxic substances, which not only weaken her immunity in relation to eggs, but also prevent the caterpillar from turning into a chrysalis, thereby preserving it as fresh food for offspring.

But it turns out that wasp larvae not only feed on the caterpillar, but also change its behavior. And when the larvae should turn into pupae, they gnaw a hole in the body of the victim and get out. The caterpillar is still alive!

Having got out to freedom, the larvae begin to twist cocoons around themselves. And the caterpillar protects them from external enemies: when stink bugs appear, it shakes its “head”, dropping predators from larvae or from a branch. And the caterpillar remains alive during the entire stage of pupation of the larvae. And only when they hatch, the caterpillar dies. What mechanisms underlie such complex behavior caterpillars? - not yet known.

A small humpback bug secretes a fragrant and sweet secret that irresistibly attracts ants from the Solenopsis genus. While interested gourmets enjoy the taste and aroma of a microscopic droplet that appears at the tip of the belly of the humpback, she carefully places a tiny testicle exactly on the articulation between the ant's head and chest.

Soon, a humpback larva hatches from the testicle. She quickly penetrates the head of an ant and begins to devour the brain of an unfortunate insect with appetite. The head of a still alive, but already motionless ant hangs sadly down.

When all the contents of the head are eaten, the larva, already mature enough, gnaws through the neck, and the head falls. It becomes a kind of "house" in which the larva completes its development, turning into an adult humpback.

From the book "100 Great Animal Records", author Anatoly Bernatsky