Thousands of small lenses work together

Seen from the front, the head of the honeybee has a triangular shape, the head of the drone it is more round. On the head are the eyes, antennae and mouth parts. Important glands are located in the head and the main center of the nervous system: a nerve bud that serves as a brain.

Built for speed

The peregrine falcon is one of the fastest birds in the sky. During level flight, with motion generated by wing-beats alone, they can reach speeds between 60-100 km/h. This is one of the fastest known speeds for level flight.

Right through a moss animals colony

Bryozoans, commonly known as moss animals, are a group of primitive animals that almost always live in colonies. There are about 5000 species, which occur in both fresh and salt water, at sites that are characteristic for them, such as ponds, lakes, ditches, streams and rivers, as well as water cellars of water companies. The colonies they form resemble plants. They are flat mats or branch-shaped colonies that are very variable in shape, and can grow to about 30 cm high. They need a hard substrate such as aquatic plants, reed stems, sticks, stones, cans, old boots and the like. Stones and especially wood seem more popular than glass and metal. They cling to any surface that provides a grip.

Here we see a cross section of a Plumatella colony that has formed around the stem of an aquatic plant. The colony is compact and zooids contact each other with their lateral walls. The large number and irregular arrangement of zooids means that almost every part of the animal is present in one place or another in the cross section.

Water worms

When searching for macro fauna in a small pool in the province of Limburg, The Netherlands, the worms on the video were found alongside many other organisms. These worms belong to the Oligochaeta, a subclass within the ringworm taxonomy. There are species that live in the soil on land and species that live in the water.

Oligochaeta are well-segmented worms and most have a large body cavity that is used as a hydro skeleton. Usually each segment has little bundles of chaeta or ‘bristles’ on the outside, The bundles can contain one to several hairs and contain muscles to pull them in and out of the body. This allows the worm to get a grip on the ground or mud while it nestles into it. When digging, the body moves peristaltically, alternately it contracts and stretches forward.

Silent flight

Why can an owl fly almost silently? The owl hunts at night and wants to make as little noise as possible in order not to frighten his prey.

Smell at a distance

The female silk worm moth (Bombyx mori) makes the pheromone bombykol in a special organ in her abdomen. When she is prepared to mate she releases this to attract males. A male silk worm moth has two long antennas that are very sensitive to the odor of the female. One single molecule is enough to cause a reaction in the sensory cells on the male's antenna. In this way he can locate the female. Even at a distance of 10 kilometers, he can still smell her!