{"id":1693,"date":"2025-01-03T18:23:33","date_gmt":"2025-01-03T12:53:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/?p=1693"},"modified":"2025-01-12T16:12:50","modified_gmt":"2025-01-12T10:42:50","slug":"brazilian-velvet-ant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/brazilian-velvet-ant\/","title":{"rendered":"Brazilian Velvet Ant"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><strong>About Brazilian Velvet Ant:\u00a0<\/strong><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Velvet ants are a <strong>group of parasitic wasps<\/strong> that are well known for a suite of defensive adaptations including bright coloration and a formidable sting.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Appearance:<\/strong> They\u2019re wasps, some of which are wingless, and are named in part for their exteriors. Velvet ant is known for its distinct <strong>black and white markings.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Habitat:<\/strong> It is found in <strong>shrub desert in Brazil<\/strong> called the Caatinga.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Characteristics<\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li>It demonstrates remarkable mobility and covers significant distances in pursuit of hosts on the ground.<\/li>\n<li>It is usually <strong>found throughout the day<\/strong>, peak activity typically coincides with the early morning and late afternoon, during periods of subdued sunlight.<\/li>\n<li>It is recently found that the black parts on <strong>female velvet ants<\/strong> were actually ultrablack so that they absorbed nearly all visible light.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>Why this finding is Unique?<\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li>Ultrablack pigmentation is rare in the animal kingdom.<\/li>\n<li>In organisms that have it, it helps them <strong>hide from predators<\/strong>, regulate body temperature or even attract mates, as the contrast against brighter colors can be visually enticing.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr \/>\n<h3>Q1: What is a Parasite?<\/h3>\n<p>It is an organism that lives on or in another organism, the host, and gets its food from or at the expense of its host.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Source:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/epaper.indianexpress.com\/c\/76538398\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">IE<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Scientists found that the dark markings on Brazilian Velvet Ant species of fluffy wasp reflected less than 1 percent of light. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":1694,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[78,65,22,23],"class_list":{"0":"post-1693","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-upsc-prelims-current-affairs","8":"tag-brazilian-velvet-ant","9":"tag-prelims-articles","10":"tag-upsc-current-affairs","11":"tag-upsc-prelims-current-affairs","12":"no-featured-image-padding"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1693"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1693\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}