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These two bugs have come up with clever ways to use digging, or burrowing, skills to survive. The trapdoor spider digs into the ground to create a nest that is also a trap. A wasp drills into trees to find safe, food-filled havens for its eggs.
This trapdoor spider snagged some of the words out of Nellie’s article. Can you draw a line to where each word belongs?
The trapdoor spider sits under the trapdoor with its legs sticking out. When an insect comes near, the trapdoor spider senses the vibrations it makes on the
ground with special sensitive leg hairs. It pounces! In a rapid pounce, the spider snatches the insect, injects it with poison, and pulls it down into the burrow to be eaten.
It takes some kinds of trapdoor spiders just 0.03 (that’s three hundredths) of a second to grab a victim. That is faster than the blink of an eye!
Draw the rest of this trapdoor spider.
Standards Link: Life Science: Know that the behavior of individual organisms is influenced by internal and external cues.
Another bug that uses special digging skills is the ichneumon (ik-new-man) wasp. This wasp lives in the pine forests of North America, Europe, and New Zealand. When it is time to lay her eggs, the female ichneumon wasp finds a pine tree. She lands on a trunk or branch and gently taps the wood with her antennae. She is listening for a hollow sound that tells her there is grub inside.
With the sharp tip of her ovipositor, she pierces through the bark and drills until she finds the grub. She lays a single egg in the grub’s body. In a few days, the tiny ichneumon young hatches and feasts on the grub’s fat body. When it is big enough, it tunnels out of the tree and flies. Adult ichneumon wasps drink the nectar of flowers.
Standards Link: Reading Comprehension: Know the sequence of events.
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© Vicki Whiting July 2024
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