Interesting Facts

According to the pest control firm Rentokil, around two billion people around the world supplement their daily diet with creepy crawlies. (The most common insects eaten tend to be meal worms and locusts.  The thing is that common "pests" in the UK are wasps, mice, rats, bed bugs, cockroaches, fleas and pigeons. It sounds as if Rentokil are trying to get us to do their work for them.  However, for me, pigeon pie, maybe, but rat fricassee or bed bug gratin?  No, thank you.) We are talking about this issue on the forum.

Fossils unearthed at two sites in China reveal that fleas, up to 10 times as large as modern fleas, drank the blood of dinosaurs and pterosaurs. (These Jurassic fleas are believed to be 165 million years old. They had claws on each of their six legs, with tiny teeth on the claws that helped the insects cling to hair shafts, and feathers. I do hope no-one gets the idea of cloning these wee beasties.) Source and icky picture.

The tiny water flea has more genes than you or I do. (It was the first crustacean to have its genome sequenced, and if you don't believe that it could be more complex than magnificent you, the average human has about 20,000 to 25,000 genes, whereas this little critter has  31,000 genes.  Which makes it the animal with the most genes to date.  As if that wasn't enough.  more than a third of the genes in the water flea are unique, and have never been seen before.  You see size really doesn't count, it's the actual count that matters.)