How does a bear look like: photo and description of an insect

The bear belongs to the order of the orthopteran family of insects. The adult grows up to 3.5-6 cm. It is an omnivorous pest. Earthworms, caterpillars of butterflies, larvae of ladybirds, May beetles, dragonflies, pupae of different insects - all this is included in its diet. Medvedka damages all kinds of cultivated plants and most wild-growing plants, biting their roots underground. She eats both seeds, and tubers, and the roots of adult plants, and young sprouts, damaging not a few pieces, but on the root destroying all the planted seedlings.

How does the bear

The nearest relatives of the bear are a cricket and a grasshopper, but it is not like them at all. And what does the bear look like? She has a very unusual appearance, the big abdomen is 2/3 of the whole body.

The powerful front part of the body consists of a connected head and chest, forming a cephalothorax. It is protected by a chitinous shell, where the bear is capable of pulling her head in case of danger. The abdomen is soft, with two shaggy outgrowths.

The first pair of 6 available legs is designed for digging the passages under the ground and resembles the mole paws turned out with a thickened leg. The Latin name of the bear Gryllotalpa is translated into Russian as "mole-cricket". In young individuals, wings are not developed, and adults have real wings that allow them to fly. Adult insects have a brown color with a lighter belly, in young medvedok the body is slightly lighter than in adults.

Reproduction of the bear

In the spring, when the soil warms to 12 degrees Celsius, the overwintered individuals come out of the earth. Like crickets, males and females of the bear attract a lot in the evening and at night to attract a chosen one.

A female digs under the ground a nest with dense walls and a rounded vault. In late spring and early summer, she lays in a prepared hole of 250 to 600 eggs. Find out what the eggs of a bear look like, if you can find such a nest and open it. There you can see small, like millet grains, eggs 3-3.5 mm in size, yellowish-gray in color.

Since the look of the bear is very unusual, it can not be confused with anything. It is necessary to find it in the soil and destroy it before the insects swarm the entire site. The nest is so dense that if you find it, you can take it out of the ground with your hands, and it will retain its shape. The pest digs in the ground a lot of tunnels that go under the surface of the soil in different directions, but from the nest to the surface the tunnel is dug along a spiral line, and that the nest does not fill the water, special outflows are made from the main tunnel. Thus, according to the way the bear's moves look, you can understand whether they lead to the nest or not.

How does a little bear look like?

Places where these insects settled , you can find out on loose platens on the surface of the soil and holes, similar to the outputs of wormholes, but smaller. Over the nest of plants does not remain, as the female bites all the roots, trying to make the site the maximum warmed by the sun's rays. The bear protects its offspring, removes parasitic fungi from eggs and larvae. The larvae leave the eggs after 2 weeks.

Before becoming an adult, the larva molts 8-9 times. It is difficult to know, because the larva of a first- year old bear does not look like an adult insect and not as representatives of later ages. The larvae of this period are bright, resemble spiders, but, unlike the latter, they do not have 8 legs, and 6. They are blind and inactive, they feed on the embryonic yolk that they have in the goiter. After the first moult, the larvae feed on humus, then pass on to the basic diet of adult medvedok.

After 25-30 days, the larvae leave the nest, and each looks just like an adult bear, but smaller and without wings. The larva of the first age reaches a size of 15 mm, the second - 20, the third - 25, and the fourth (pronymph) - 35 mm. Thus, by the way the larva of the bear looks and what size it is, you can determine its age. In the beginning of autumn, the population of teddy bears consists of adult insects (imago) and larvae predominantly of the 3rd-4th age

Where the wolf hibernates

Adult bear and larvae hibernate in the soil in vertically arranged courses. Adults go to a depth of 1 meter, and larvae - up to 0.5 m. The overwintered larvae differ from adults by underdeveloped wings. After a few more lines, they become adults by the end of the second summer of their life. The number of lines depends on the climate of the site. In the more southerly regions, the moult is smaller, and the development occurs more quickly.

Distribution area

The habitat is well-moistened soils, while it can swim and dive, and fly, and also runs fast and excellently digs underground passages. He prefers to settle near water reservoirs in water meadows, but can live far from water, avoiding only the most arid places. Medvedka lives in all countries of Eastern and Western Europe, except for the northernmost regions, in all countries of Asia, in America and North Africa.

This is a very ancient insect, which can be seen even by the way the beetle looks like a bear. It should be noted that it is incorrect to call it a beetle, they are called in the entomology of representatives of the coleopteran order, and the bear is a representative of a squad of orthopteran insects. Given this circumstance, we can talk about how an insect looks like a bear. They appeared on Earth more than 3 million years ago and during this time perfectly adapted to very different living conditions.

Chemical, agrotechnical and biological methods of destruction

Eating larvae, a bear can reduce the number of May beetles and butterflies. In the wild, it brings enough benefits, which outweighs the damage that is inflicted on plants. But, unfortunately, she quite often settles on cultivated lands, in gardens and greenhouses. It can appear and even overwinter in a dunghill or compost. If you use manure, without giving it a foul, the land will be infected not only by insects, but also by seeds of weeds.

Since the harm from the bear is more obvious in cultivated areas, for many centuries of farming man has developed many different ways to reduce the number of insects.

1. Use of chemicals. They are very effective in fighting insects. The use of insecticides requires compliance with all instructions, which is often ignored. But the poison that kills one organism can not be harmless to another! In general, organophosphate insecticides and lures processed by them are used, which are buried in the soil ("Phenaxin plus", "Medotox"). In the spring, before planting, baits are used in greenhouses, and in autumn, when the crop is harvested, and the bear is still active, pyrethroids are used for fumigation, that is fumigating the greenhouse with the use of substances safe for humans and animals, but killing insects.
2. Agrotechnical measures used to control pests. These methods include techniques that create adverse conditions for pests. This method is cheaper than others and lays the foundation for ecologically clean agricultural products. An example is loosening and digging of soil, observance of optimum terms of planting of plants, struggle against weeds, use of mineral fertilizers.
3. Use of biological drugs to destroy the bears. Theoretically, they have no competitors in their effectiveness. The main principle is the use of specially developed drugs that cause fungal or parasitic disease in insects.
4. There is another technological method, which frightens the bear from small areas. On its site you can install ultrasonic "scarers". It is necessary that they work always, otherwise the insects will return to the site.

Folk and mechanical ways of fighting

Among the popular methods of fighting pests there are very effective methods. These include the use of decoctions of different plants, planting plants that pests do not tolerate, the use of traps. You can bury in the ground cans filled with water for 2/3, get there the bear can not independently get out. They do not like the smell of some flowers, for example, marigolds and chrysanthemums. An interesting way of scaring off is to install a vane turntable on the site. On thin poles it is possible to fasten them a little. When they rotate, the vibration is transferred to the soil, and if there is a "beetle" bear, it leaves the site.

The most ancient method is the mechanical destruction of the bears. Insects are manually collected and destroyed, digging traps, cleaning manure from pests. All of them are very effective, but very laborious and unpleasant, since the bear looks intimidating. These methods are suitable for small areas.

Attraction of natural enemies to the site

The use of natural enemies refers to not very popular methods, they do not bring the same moral satisfaction as mechanical ones, but they are the most logical. Such methods include attraction to the site of birds, lizards, frogs. Medvedka eats small bitterns, starlings, rooks, as well as lizards and shrews. Often they are perceived on the site as uninvited guests, and many of them simply need to be protected, since the benefits of their presence are obvious.

What to do if the site has a bear

The best methods are those taking into account the nature of the pest. In order to get rid of the bear, it is necessary in spring and early summer to loosen row rows to a depth of 15-20 cm to detect and destroy insect nests. In the same period, you can leave dung for attracting females, and when they build a nest there, scatter manure and destroy nests. In the fall, when the bear is seeking refuge for wintering, effective is digging holes in the ground with depths of 0.5-0.7 m, filling them with manure. Such pits are attractive to them, they get into the dung, and when frost begins, manure must be extracted from the pits and scattered on the surface of the soil. Both adult insects and larvae can not stand the cold and die.

When laying greenhouses, it is necessary to carefully examine the soil for the detection of adult insects or nests, around the greenhouse, it is necessary to dig trapping grooves. From the manure intended for greenhouses, it is necessary to choose and destroy the bear. Knowing what the bear looks like, you definitely will not miss it.