CATDOLL : CATDOLL: Firefly Introduction (3 minutes of Firefly Introduction)

1. Imitate the third paragraph of the little white rabbit playing the flute?

Answer: On a moonlit night with sparse stars, a lively and cute little white rabbit took out his beloved little flute under a strong and sturdy old locust tree and played a melodious tune. The graceful flute sound reached the ears of the little animal.

The flowers, plants and trees in the forest all rustled, as if they were the little white rabbit's band; the fireflies held up their little lanterns to illuminate the little white rabbit; the noble peacocks spread their screens, as if they were dancing with the little white rabbit. The big locust tree became a shining big stage.

2. What is the full text of Fabre’s “The Fireflies”?

In our area, there are few insects as well-known and familiar to everyone as the firefly. This strange little creature hangs a lantern on its buttocks to express its joy of life. Who has not seen it wandering in the grass on a hot summer night like a spark from the full moon? Even if you have not seen it, you have at least heard of its name.

Now let's ask what fireflies eat.

A master of gastronomy once said, "Tell me what you eat, and I'll tell you what you are." We can first ask the same question of any insect whose habits we want to study, because in the largest or the smallest animal, the stomach is everything; the availability of food governs everything in life. Now, although the firefly looks weak and harmless, it is actually a carnivore, a hunter of game, and its means of doing this are rare and vicious. Its prey is usually snails. This has long been known to entomologists, but I feel from my reading that people don't know enough about it, especially its strange method of attack, which I have never seen anywhere else. If you look at it, you will find that it is not well understood, or even understood at all.

Before eating their prey, fireflies first inject an anesthetic into it, rendering it unconscious, just like the wonderful surgery of humans, where patients are anesthetized before surgery so that they do not feel pain. Fireflies' prey is usually small snails that are barely the size of a cherry. In summer, these snails gather in groups on the dry stalks of rice or wheat or other long dry stems of plants. They stay there motionless and deep in thought throughout the hot summer. It was in this situation that I have seen fireflies use their surgical skills many times to immobilize their prey on the trembling stems and then have a delicious meal.

It also knows other places where food is stored. It often goes to the edge of the irrigation ditch, where the soil is damp and overgrown with weeds, which is a paradise for snails. At this time, the firefly performs surgery on the snail on the ground. I can easily raise fireflies at home to carefully observe the details of this surgeon's operation. Now I want to let the readers see this strange scene.

I put some grass, a few fireflies and some snails in a large glass bottle. The snails are the right size, not too big, not too small. Please be patient and especially keep an eye on them, because the things we want to see will happen suddenly and in a short time.

Finally we saw it. The firefly briefly surveyed its prey. Usually, the snail is completely hidden in its shell, except for a little bit of soft flesh on its mantle. Then the greedy one opened its tool, which was very simple, but could only be seen with the help of a magnifying glass. It was two jaws that had been turned into hooks, very sharp, but as thin as a hair. Under the microscope, one could see that there was a thin groove on the hook. This was its tool.

The firefly uses its tool to repeatedly and gently tap the snail's outer membrane. This is done gently, as if it were a harmless kiss rather than a sting. When children playfully pinch each other's skin with two fingers, we used to call this action "twisting" because it is just a little bit like tickling, not twisting. Now we will use the word "twisting". It is okay to use children's language when talking to insects. It is a good way to make simple minds understand each other. So we say that the firefly twists the snail.

It twists just right. It twists methodically, without hurrying, and after each twist it rests a little, as if it wants to test the effect of its twisting. It does not twist often, and no more than six twists are enough to subdue the prey and make it immobile. It is very likely that the hook is also used to peck at the snail meat, but I cannot say for sure because I did not see it later. But only the first few twists are enough to make the snail lifeless and unconscious, and the firefly's method is so quick, almost like lightning, that there is no doubt that the poison has been transmitted to the snail by means of the grooved hook. These stings are so gentle on the surface, but they produce a rapid effect. Now let's test it.

After the firefly twisted the snail four or five times, I pulled the snail out of the firefly's mouth and used a fine needle to prick the front of the snail, that is, the part of the snail's body that was exposed from the shell; the pierced flesh did not tremble at all, and it had no reaction to the needle prick at all, it was like a completely lifeless corpse.

There are even more convincing examples. Sometimes I am lucky enough to see some snails crawling, with their legs wriggling and fully extended, when they are attacked by fireflies. The snail moves a few times to show its uneasiness, and then everything stops. The legs stop crawling, the front of the body loses the graceful curvature like a swan's neck, and the antennae hang down limply, bent like a broken cane. This posture is maintained.

Was the snail really dead? Not at all; I could revive an apparently dead snail. After two or three days of this half-dead state, I isolated the "patient" and gave it a bath. Although this was not absolutely necessary for the success of the experiment, two days later, my snail, which had been injured by the insidious fireflies, was back to normal. It was revived, so to speak; it could move and feel again. If it was stimulated with a needle, it felt; it squirmed, crawled, and extended its tentacles, as if nothing unpleasant had happened. The drowsiness of the whole body, like being drunk, completely disappeared, and it was back to life. What is this state of temporary inability to move and not feeling pain called? I think there is only one appropriate name, that is, anesthesia.

Many carnivorous hymenoptera eat their prey when it is still alive but immobile. Through their exploits we have learned the marvelous technique of insects in paralyzing their prey by numbing its nerve centers with their own venom. In ancient times, fireflies and other insects apparently knew this technique before human scientific practice had even discovered one of the most amazing techniques of modern surgery. The insects knew it much earlier than we do, but in different ways. Surgeons let their patients sniff ether or chloroform, and insects inject a very small amount of a special poison through the hooks of their jaws. Will humans one day make use of this knowledge? What wonderful discoveries we could make in the future if we better understood the secrets of the little insects!

Now let's get back to fireflies.

If the snail is crawling on the ground, or even retreating into its shell, it is not difficult to attack it. The snail's shell has no cover, and most of the front part of the body is exposed. In this case, the snail cannot defend itself and is easily injured. But it is also often the case that the snail stays in a high place, clinging to a dry pole or a smooth stone. This support becomes a temporary cover for its shell, which prevents any malicious person who wants to disturb the inhabitants of the shell from entering; but there is one condition, that is, there are no cracks in the wall anywhere. But it is often the case that the snail's shell is not close to its support, and as a result, the cover is not closed. In this case, even if the exposed area is only a little large, the firefly can use its delicate tools to gently sting the snail, so that it will immediately fall asleep and motionless, and the firefly can have a good meal in peace and quiet.

Fireflies are very careful when eating snails. The attacker must handle its victim gently and not cause it to struggle. If the snail struggles or moves, it will fall from the high stem. Once it falls to the ground, the food is gone, because fireflies do not actively and enthusiastically look for their prey. They just take advantage of what they get by luck without working hard to find it. So when attacking, for the sake of safety, it must make the snail feel no pain and not cause the snail to have a muscle reaction, so as not to fall from a high place. It can be seen that sudden deep anesthesia is a good way for fireflies to achieve their goals.

How does a firefly eat its prey? Does it literally eat? That is, does it cut the snail into small pieces, slice it into thin slices, and then chew it? I think not. I have never seen any trace of solid food in the mouths of my caged creatures. The firefly does not really "eat", it drinks. It takes the method of maggots, turning its prey into a thin meat gruel to satisfy its hunger. It turns its prey into a liquid before eating it, just like the flesh-eating larvae of flies. The whole process is this: no matter how big the snail is, it is almost always anesthetized by a firefly. Soon, the guests come in twos and threes and feast with the real owner without any quarrel. After letting them feast for two days, I turned the snail shell upside down, and the contents inside were like a pot turned upside down and the meat gruel flowed out of the pot. The guests walked away with their stomachs full. Only this little residue was left.

The matter is obvious: just like the "twist" we mentioned earlier, after repeated gentle stings, each guest is processed with a special digestive agent, and the snail meat becomes meat porridge. The fireflies eat each other and everyone enjoys it. It can be seen that the two curved hooks in the firefly's mouth are not only used to sting the snail and inject anesthetic poison, but also undoubtedly inject liquid that can turn the snail meat into a liquid. These two small tools that can only be seen with a magnifying glass should have another function. They are concave, just like the curved hooks on the mouth of the ant fly, used to suck and eat the captured food without cutting the prey into pieces. However, there is a huge difference between the two, that is, the ant fly leaves a lot of leftovers and throws them outside the funnel-shaped trap dug in the sand, while the firefly, an expert in liquefaction, eats nothing, or almost nothing. The tools used by the two are similar, but one only sucks the blood of the prey, while the other relies on liquefaction in advance and then eats the prey completely.

Sometimes the snail's balance is very precarious, but the firefly's work is very delicate. My glass bottles provide me with many examples of this. The snail often crawls to the top of the bottle covered with a piece of glass and sticks itself to the glass with a little mucus. Because there is not much mucus, the slightest movement will cause the shell to fall off the glass to the bottom of the bottle.

However, fireflies often use their climbing organs to supplement their leg strength to climb to high places and choose their prey. They observe carefully, find a gap, and then bite it gently, making the prey unconscious. Then they immediately prepare meat porridge as food for several days.

After the firefly finished its meal and walked away, its shell was completely empty, but the shell, which was only attached to the glass with a little bit of mucus, did not fall off or even move in position. The snail did not resist at all and was gradually turned into porridge, being sucked dry at the place where it received the first blow. This detail tells us how sudden the anesthetic sting is and how cleverly the firefly eats the snail, without letting the snail fall off the very smooth and vertical glass, and even without shaking on the very fragile adhesion line.

3. Insect Notes - What is the main story of the article Firefly?

Fireflies have six short legs and colorful colors. Their bodies are chestnut brown, their chests are red, and the edges of their ring-shaped clothes are dotted with some bright red spots. Fireflies live by sucking the flesh of animals. They like to suck the flesh of snails the most. Fireflies suck the flesh of snails cleanly, leaving only an empty shell inside. "Souvenirs Entomologiques", also known as "The World of Insects", "The Story of Insects", "Notes on Entomology" or "The Story of Insects", is a long biological work written by French entomologist and writer Jean-Henri Casimir Fabre, with a total of ten volumes. The first volume was first published in 1879, and the whole book was first published in 1907. This work is an insect biology work that summarizes the types, characteristics, habits and mating habits of insects. It records the real life of insects and expresses the spirituality shown by insects in their struggle for survival. It also records Fabre's motivation for being obsessed with insect research, his life ambitions, knowledge background, living conditions, etc.

The author integrates the colorful life of insects with his own insights into life and views insects with humanity. His words reveal the author's respect and love for life.

4. What are the appearance characteristics of caterpillar fireflies?

The firefly has a colorful coat. Its body is chestnut brown, its chest is soft pink, and the edges of its round coat are dotted with some bright brown-red spots.

Fireflies have three pairs of short legs, which they use to run. When male fireflies reach adulthood, they grow elytra, just like other beetles. Features: In addition to adhering to smooth surfaces and crawling in dangerous places, the small tubes also have a third function, which is to act as a brush. In order to attract mates, male fireflies emit light at the end of their tails.

Male fireflies also have an organ that can transmit light to distant places.