Freaky Beetle Larva Turn on and Devour their Frog Predators

http://www.livescience.com/16232-beetle-larvae-devour-frogs-toads.html

These horribly creepy crawlies have attacked their predators! Their usual killers are frogs and toads but the larvae of several species of ground beetle have turned on the poor amphibians. They have a grisly way of doing so: they attract the frog by waggling their antennae and jiggling their jaws, at which point the toad thinks he’s going in for an easy kill. He closes in slowly and then pounces. But the larva evades capture and launches itself onto the nearest part of the frog or toad's body. He then begins to suck out the amphibian’s fluids and chew and gnaw on its flesh, leaving nothing but a pile of bones.

Researchers say that sometimes the victim manages to swallow the horrible beetle larva, only to vomit it up later. If the larva is unharmed, it will promptly jump onto the exhausted frog and continue its meal. The record is for a larva to survive in its victim’s belly for two hours before it was vomited out and devoured the frog.  If the frog is lucky, the attacking beetle will be in its first stage of development, and when it moults will drop of the toad, leaving a horrid scar. But if the larva is older, the frog is doomed. The beetle not only sucks the body fluids, but starts to chew. (Adult beetles can also ambush amphibians, paralyzing them by severing their spinal cord or a crucial muscle.)

All this is absolutely disgusting, and gives me the shivers just reading about it. But it’s life!

The Planet Orbiting Two Suns

http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/215813/20110918/planet-orbiting-two-suns-uncommon-planet-tatooine-kepler-16b-kepler-16-saturn-mass-planet.htm

NASA's $600 million Kepler space telescope discovered a planet orbiting two suns, just like in Star Wars, 34 years ago, where they refer to a planet called "Tatooine" with two sunsets. Named Kepler-16b, the rare planet is the first confirmed solar system of its kind. A planet like this is called a circumbinary planet. (A planet that orbits one sun is called a binary planet.)

Kepler-16b is about the size of Saturn and 200 light years from Earth.

But Kepler-16b is not completely like Tatooine. It is cold and dark, made of gas and probably not inhabited.

The reason for this is that the two suns are smaller and cooler than our sun. They are 20 and 69 percent as massive as the sun and circle each other every 41 days. It takes Kepler 229 days to circle both stars. Kepler 16b's interaction with two different suns means that temperatures on its surface can vary by about 50 degrees, between roughly minus 100 degrees Fahrenheit and minus 150 degrees Fahrenheit.

The Macaroni Penguin's Weird Habit of Laying Two Eggs a Year

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/20/science/20obpeng.html?ref=penguins

The female Macaroni penguin lays two eggs every year, the first one much smaller than the second. This has puzzled scientists for six decades, particularly as the mother kicks the tiny egg out of the nest before it hatches.
But they think that the reason that the reason for the lack of size for the first egg is a drop in the amount of protein as the penguin returns to land from the sea. Also, if the egg is laid within days of arrival to land, the egg will be tiny, maybe even half the size of the second egg. And if the couple wait longer, the egg will be closer to the size of the next egg, though it will still be kicked out.
But why the female Macaroni penguin bothers to produce the small egg in the first place is still a mystery. Scientists believe that it may be a part of evolution gone wrong.

What I Know and Want to Learn

What I want to learn:

Everything about living things, which I am very interested in.

What I already knew:

I know that the Spanish flu after World War I wiped out more people than the war itself. That mites live in our hair, our beds, our clothes. That frogs fertilize their eggs on the outside and insects on the inside. I can’t really say everything I know…