The end is not near: Grasshoppers invade Las Vegas Strip — but only temporarily
Massive swarms of grasshoppers descended on the Las Vegas Strip last week, startling tourists and residents as they pass through town on their northbound migration. Videos posted on social media show swarms of the bugs, called pallid-winged grasshoppers, converging on the bright neon lights of ...
The sound of summer: Love them or hate them, cicadas have a special place in Japanese culture
Cicadas — known as semi in Japanese — are a superfamily of insects with around 2,000 known species worldwide, around 35 of which live in Japan.
The first of a four-part series that focuses on traditional ways to mitigate the heat of a Japanese summer.
Summer event featuring 300 live beetles to be held at Tokyo Skytree
An annual summer event for beetle viewing — an activity popular with families and children — will kick off later this month in the capital at the commercial complex around Tokyo Skytree, the world's tallest broadcasting tower. During the event, set to run from July ...
German bug watchers sound alarm over 'massive extinction' of insects
For almost 30 years they passed as quirky eccentrics, diligently setting up their insect traps in the Rhine countryside to collect tens of millions of bugs and creepy crawlers. Now the group of German entomology enthusiasts can boast a world-class scientific treasure: evidence of what ...
Catapulting spider springs a surprise on unsuspecting prey, study finds
Just when you thought spiders couldn't get any more terrifying. A study published Monday has found that an arachnid species is capable of winding up its web to store up elastic energy, before releasing its grip and catapulting itself at furious speed toward its unsuspecting ...
Leading Japanese insecticide maker plans to expand sales in China and Southeast Asia
Leading Japanese insecticide manufacturer Earth Corp. plans to expand sales in China and Southeast Asia via a subsidiary in Malaysia, as the risk of dengue fever and malaria in the region drives up demand for repellents. The company has set up a wholly owned unit ...
Japanese man jailed for two years in Ecuador for attempt to smuggle insects and spiders to Hokkaido
A 26-year-old Japanese man was sentenced to two years in prison in Ecuador for attempting to smuggle a massive haul of insects and arachnids out of the country, officials said Thursday. The defendant was arrested at Quito airport in March with 248 spiders, cockroaches, wasps, ...
Why do zebras have stripes? Because they make bad landing strips for flies
Scientists are providing new evidence to answer the long-standing question about why zebras have stripes. It appears stripes make terrible landing strips, bamboozling the fierce blood-sucking flies that try to feast on zebras and carry deadly diseases. Researchers on Wednesday described experiments demonstrating that horse ...
Japanese researchers extend life span of flies, offering hope for slowing aging in humans
Japanese researchers pin down a way to activate autophagy, a key metabolic function in cells, leading to a slower aging process and longer life span in a nonhuman study.
Global 'catastrophic collapse' of insects threatening pollination and food chains: study
Nearly half of all insect species worldwide are in rapid decline and a third could disappear altogether, according to a study warning of dire consequences for crop pollination and natural food chains. "Unless we change our way of producing food, insects as a whole will ...
Bug business: Cockroaches corralled by the millions in China to crunch waste
In the near pitch-dark, you can hear them before you see them — millions of cockroaches scuttling and fluttering across stacks of wooden boards as they devour food scraps by the ton in a novel form of urban waste disposal. The air is warm and ...
