Leijpark013

@leijpark013 · 08 Jul 2021

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Leijpark 013 8 July 2021 leaf hunter (fly)

#leijpark013   #bladjager
Leij park 013
Listing by Thierry P. Dinjens · 23 hours ·
Flies come in all shapes, sizes and types. Worldwide, as many as one hundred and twenty thousand species have been described, and five thousand of them fly around our country. Some flies don't even look like flies as we normally see them, like the bromflies and fleshflies. Take the Regular Leafhunter. We'll find him in the Leijpark. The animal is slim like a wasp and yet it's a fly. All flies have two wings, wasps and bees have four.
The ordinary leaf hunter lives up to his name; he hunts from leaves of plants that prefer not to get too high. We find it on the leaf of the blueberry, but also in conifers, for example, rather close to the ground. The 'hunt' is not active, but certainly. The animal sits on a leaf and: wait. Looking for prey with diligent zeal is not there. The fly sits and waits. Until an insect passes by no bigger than himself: little moths, grasshoppers, fruit flies, that kind of little prey. The Ordinary Leafhunter belongs to the prey flies and every species within that family has its own preferences when it comes to prey animals.
As soon as an unfortunate insect lands that meets the conditions, the Ordinary leaf hunter launches himself, and with his front paws, pulls the prey to his jaws and pierces his victim. With his mouth, he pumps in a large amount of enzymes. Enzymes are substances that cause a reaction, but are not used themselves. As an example: Enzymes are those substances that are added to beer production to ferment beer.
In the case of the Ordinary leaf hunter, the injected enzymes cause two things:
— prey becomes paralyzed
— the tissue of the prey begins to break down immediately
The Ordinary Leafhunter can only take liquid food as we are used to from flies. The prey turns into a bag of liquid drunk like a pack of Caprisun. Have you seen the movie 'The Fly', in which Jeff Goldblum turns into a fly and puke over a pack of biscuits to take the smurry up afterwards?? That idea.
The big advantage of being low in a plant is the fact that there are several leaves together. The higher you get in a plant on tree, the leaves become scarcer and the spots between the branches become more open. On a low part of the plant there are more leaves on which prey animals can land on the one hand and provide shelter and shelter for the Ordinary leaf hunter. Only at the last minute, the moment of landing prey has the Ordinary Leaffighter in the candy, but then it's often too late.
Who thinks nothing happens in the shrubs and trees of the Leijpark is well wrong?. There's really a lot of things happening and who takes the time to pay attention to that that falls from one adventure to another. Whoever looks closely sees them fly.