flies Archives - DOES GOD EXIST? TODAY

March 9, 2023February 28, 2023

The Fascinating World of Insects

This week, we have talked about the fascinating world of insects. My least favorite insects are mosquitoes. However, we have pointed out that mosquitoes perform valuable functions. Common flies are probably the second least favorite on my list, but even those flies have a purpose.

WHAT GOOD ARE FLIES?

Of course, there must be some way to control insect populations, especially mosquitoes and flies. Humans create pesticides to manage them, but that doesn’t work very well. Insects evolve resistance to pesticides, and those pest-killing chemicals also kill helpful insects and cause harm to the birds and animals that eat them. Natural insect control by birds, bats, and even insects is safer and often more effective.

BIRDS ARE BETTER THAN PESTICIDES

INSECTS CONTROL INSECTS

Some insects can also serve as nutritious, high-protein food for people. In addition, insects support the life of plants, animals, and humans in many ways.

INSECTS AS FOOD

WHY DO WE NEED INSECTS?

We can fear insects (entomophobia) or hate them, but we might as well love them because the fascinating world of insects is part of life on Earth. Thank God that we have insects to provide food for birds and other animals while pollinating the plants that provide food for us. Here is a final thought about “bugs.”

HOW MANY BUGS ARE IN YOUR HOME?

July 11, 2020July 9, 2020

Carrion Cactus Fools Flies

One of the exciting things we see in the natural world is how living things solve problems produced by the environment. An excellent example is the carrion cactus that lives in hot and dry deserts of Africa.

Getting enough water is a challenge for plants that live in places where rainfall is very sparse. Those plants employ ingenious ways of storing water and reducing transpiration losses by having needles instead of leaves. What we might not have thought about is the problem of pollination in the desert environment. There aren’t enough plants to support a bee population, and pollinators are few and far between.

One cactus called the carrion cactus (Stapelia gigantea) has solved the pollination issue in an unusual way. When the cactus flowers are ready to be pollinated, they give off a foul smell that reeks of dead and rotting flesh. The smell of carrion attracts flies. As they scramble over the flowers trying to find the dead organism, they get pollen on their bodies and pollinate the cactus flowers.

God has created creatures that clean up dead and decaying organic matter. We have discussed the design roles of dung beetles, vultures, and worms in cleaning up the environment. In the carrion cactus, we see a plant that fools insects into thinking there is something to clean up as a way to accomplish pollination. This impressive trick allows a plant to thrive in the dry and hostile environment of the desert.

We saw the carrion cactus at the Frederik Meijer Gardens in Grand Rapids, Michigan. They feature amazing displays of many kinds of plants, including desert plants and carnivorous plants, that show God’s creativity.

October 13, 2018October 11, 2018

How Many Bugs Are in Your Home?

Would you like to guess how many bugs are in your home? In the fall of 2017 researchers from the California Academy of Sciences published a survey of the bugs in 50 homes in and around Raleigh, North Carolina. The researchers took 10,000 samples from basements, bedrooms, kitchens, and attics. They identified 579 species from the 304 families of arthropods known to science. Arthropods include insects, mites and, spiders.

The researchers found ants, carpet beetles, gall midges, and cobweb spiders in 100% of the homes. In many of the houses, they found booklice, dark-winged fungus gnats, cellar spiders, scuttle flies, and dust mites. Misha Leong who was the lead author of the study says that most homes contain hundreds if not thousands of individual arthropods.

It is interesting that as people move toward buying organic and buying in bulk, they are increasing the bugs in their homes. Indian meal moths, for example, can contaminate oatmeal or chew through a sweater. They lay eggs in our food and closets, and the larvae chew through packaging leaving a mess of silk and frass (waste) behind. If we use the food quickly enough we eat the eggs, and since they don’t hurt us, we don’t even know they are there.

The reality is that we have and will always have lots of bugs in our homes. Many of them are beneficial to us. Booklice, for example, eat fungi and mold. Spiders eat insects and other harmful agents including flies and mosquitoes. Harmful spiders like the black widow and brown recluse are rare. Studies have also shown that many of our chronic diseases are related to our failure to be exposed to biological diversity. Leong says, “Rooms with more kinds of arthropods may be healthier rooms.”

God did not place us in a sterile world. The more we learn of what we live with each day, the more we realize the complexity of life. Living with bugs is essential to our long-term survival. How many bugs are in your home?
–John N. Clayton © 2018