Certain locusts have a huge throughput of food. Day in and day out, they eject about 300 times their body weight from their buttocks in the form of tiny urine droplets. The whole thing is probably a strategy that insects use to save energy, American researchers report.
This is made possible by a kind of specialized device, a team led by Saad Bhamla of the Georgia Institute of Technology writes in the journal Nature Communications. Videos from the researchers show how the animals shoot small droplets almost every second. When they evaporate, they leave behind a residue that gives plants and fruits a whitewashed appearance.
Insects feed on xylem sap
In comparison, according to the researchers, the daily amount of feces in humans equates to only about 2.5 percent of their body weight on average. According to the researchers, the crickets, which are only a few millimeters in size (scientific name Homalodisca vitripennis), feed exclusively on so-called xylem sap, which is very poor in nutrients and consists almost exclusively of water.
The animals must ingest correspondingly large amounts of plant juice. They have an efficient digestive system that can filter and move large amounts of plant secretions through the body. To subsequently get rid of the water, these crickets use a special mechanism that mainly accelerates the excreted droplets, the researchers write.
Probably strategy to save energy
The whole thing is probably a strategy of the crickets to save energy, because the energy consumption is significantly higher with other methods, write the researchers, who used numerous mathematical models for their study. In addition, by throwing the droppings far away, enemies would not be so easily informed of the crickets’ whereabouts.
Source: Krone
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