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Barnaby's Bugs

Text of Reverse of Cards
Code: B101	Snails are incredibly diverse and can therefore be very difficult to identify! The snail pictured is likely to be a moss snail, a small air-breathing land snail. Terrestrial snails like this one are herbivores and harmless – despite sometimes having over 25,000 teeth placed, strangely enough, on their tongues. The snail’s shell develops while it is still an embryo. Made out of calcium carbonate, it grows as the snail does. Snails move by gliding on their muscular foot; mucus is produced to assist in this locomotion and to help prevent injury. A snail can walk over sharp objects, a razor blade for instance, without any damage.
Code: B102	This species of dragonfly can be found throughout summer and well into November, and is plentiful in England, Wales and Ireland, but rarer in Scotland. Fossil records show us that dragonflies were flying 300 million years ago, before dinosaurs roamed the earth! Dragonflies are ace flyers, with the ability to loop-the-loop, hover, and fly sideways and backwards. They have become symbols of regeneration and strength to many cultures, with folklore sometimes investing them with supernatural powers. Dragonflies have aquatic larvae which need good-quality water to thrive – the presence of dragonflies is therefore a useful indicator of good water quality and a healthy ecosystem. They are voracious predators, ideal for keeping down the numbers of gnats and mosquitoes, which they catch and devour mid-air.
Code: B103	Did you know that a woodlouse is not actually an insect, but a crustacean, like a crab? Like other crustaceans they have pale blue blood (or colourless if it’s not carrying oxygen). Woodlice also eat their own poo, to reabsorb vital copper minerals, and are able to drink water both through their mouth and their anus – disgusting, but true! A woodlouse has fourteen legs and is a bit of an eco-warrior, being a keen recycler. By munching on rotten plants, it breaks down the vegetable matter, thus improving the soil. The woodlouse has a variety of rather comic alternative names, including: armadillo bug, cheeselog and God’s little pig.
Code: B104	Luckily, the wood ant, despite being the largest species of ant native to the British Isles, is no more than 10mm long, because you wouldn’t want to mess with it if it was any larger. These are insects with advanced anger-management issues, fighting in vicious inter-nest battles every spring to determine territorial boundaries, the survivors feasting on the dead. Ants astonish in many more ways, however. Research has suggested an ant’s brain has a greater processing power than the computer that controlled the first Apollo space missions! There are also more ants than any other living creature on this planet; it has been calculated that their combined weight would be greater than the weight of all human life.
Code: B105	Wasps! What are they good for? Absolutely nothing … may be what most people would answer. However, wasps are widely misunderstood. Find out more about the wasp and it suddenly becomes a creature that we can appreciate for its extraordinary qualities. For example, they make the most beautiful and intricate spherical nests, chewing up wood to make their own paper building material. Wasps are also responsible for keeping down numbers of insects, which can be pests, by feeding them to their larvae. The wasp pictured is a queen; only she, along with fertile and infertile female workers, can sting. A common perception is that a wasp attacks you just for the sadistic pleasure of it, but in fact they are ‘programmed’ to sting to defend their nest.
Code: B106	This is the spider you are most likely to find in your garden. Female orb spiders usually make the web, and then lie in wait for prey to become entangled. Each night the spider eats the web, along with any prey attached to it, spinning a new web in time for the morning. Some male spiders will try to attract a mate by plucking their webs like a guitar. The male orb spider, however, is understandably cautious about approaching the female, because he is so much smaller. He knows that she might decide he would make a much better meal than a mate – and would eat him instead! Spiders are not insects but arachnids, and have eight legs and either six or eight eyes. The ultimate creepy crawly frightener, the spider is actually the gardener’s best friend. It helps control the levels of insects that would otherwise become pests, while not touching any vegetable matter such as garden plants and flowers.
Code: B107	The queen bee is the largest bumblebee, followed by the female worker bee, with the male – known as the drone – being the smallest. Only female bumblebees can sting, and, unlike honeybees, they do not die afterwards. They are much less aggressive than honeybees, however, and since they live in small nests they will not swarm. Planting an array of cottage flowers and wildflowers will encourage the gentle bumblebee into your garden. They will prove their usefulness by pollinating your plants, allowing the creation of new seeds and new plants. The bumblebee has stiff hairs on its back legs that form a ‘basket’; these are used to carry pollen back to the nest to feed the young. They do produce a little honey, but not enough for commercial use.
Code: B108	This small species of butterfly is common throughout most of Europe and will occasionally visit gardens. A sun lover, it can often be seen basking on a stone or on bare ground, the males keeping an eye out for rivals, which they aggressively chase away. Butterfly wings are covered with thousands of tiny scales that overlap in rows and are arranged in colourful designs unique to each species. Oddly enough, many butterflies have taste sensors in their feet, so they taste their food by standing on it. This is the way they make decisions about where to lay their eggs, as they want to provide a good food source for the resulting caterpillars. The butterfly does not have a mouth or teeth for eating; instead they use a long, straw-like structure, a proboscis, to drink nectar and juices from plants and flowers.
Code: B109	This Oak Bush Cricket is a European native. Splendidly outlandish, it is an alien mixture of bulky armour-plated body and long spindly legs, adapted especially for jumping. This small cricket – its body is just 20mm long – is a tree-dweller, living exclusively in the foliage of trees such as oaks. Many types of male crickets are known for ‘singing’: a sound actually produced by rubbing their body parts together. However, Oak Bush males drum instead, using their hind feet on the surface of leaves. The female Oak Bush Cricket can be distinguished by the rather terrifying-looking long appendage she brandishes, which is used for inserting eggs into the crevices of bark. The crickets are nocturnal and carnivorous, and feed on smaller invertebrates.
Code: B110	Horse flies are among the largest of the true flies, and are remarkably noisy in flight. The horse fly has large compound eyes, which means that the eye has a wide field of vision and can detect fast movement. This is ideal, as sight is primarily what a female horse fly uses to hunt for her prey. The females need blood for reproduction and can inflict a nasty bite with mandibles similar to tiny serrated blades, which they use to rip flesh apart. She can then lap up any blood seepage. Pictured is a female – look at those biting parts on her mouth! The male, however, is harmless and feeds on nectar and sometimes pollen. The horse fly is an important pollinator, particularly in countries such as South Africa.
Code: B111	This caterpillar is so named because in its moth stage it looks remarkably like a cat. Before it metamorphoses, however, it has a number of defence mechanisms. Its green-and-brown pattern provides camouflage, making the caterpillar difficult to find among greenery. If disturbed, it is much less passive, whirling its whip-like rear legs around, and even firing formic acid from a gland in its head. The Puss Moth Caterpillar looks like it is wearing a parka and is somewhat reminiscent of South Park’s Kenny, a character who usually met a bad end in every episode, so it is probably sensible that it takes precautions!
Code: B112	Aphids aren’t popular with gardeners, and when present in large numbers they can become pests, sucking the sap from plants and extracting all the nutrients. However, aphids are an important part of the diet of other insects, and thus a vital part of the food chain. The wood ant is one insect who seems more than partial to the aphid, but in a rather unusual way. Plant sap provides the aphid with an excess of sugar, which it expresses in the form of a concentrated solution known as honeydew. Wood ants can’t get enough of this stuff, and actively enter into a relationship with the aphid. They guard it and even occasionally give it a ‘stroke’ with an antenna to stimulate production of the sugary substance.
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