DID YOU KNOW?
- Your skin has nerves that cause itch. These nerves "feel" something on your skin (whether it be a feather or a bug biting you), send a message to your brain and your brain makes your hand move to the area to scratch! This happens in a split second and sometimes without you even being aware of it.
- People who study itch are called "itchologists."
- You can get a reaction to poison ivy, oak and sumac - even months later - from garden tools, a ball, even pets that have urushiol on them! Urushiol is the oil from the plant that can cause a skin reaction.
- 90 percent of the population is sensitive to poison ivy, oak and sumac, so chances are you will get a reaction if you come in contact with one of these plants.
- The very first time you come in contact with the urushiol of poison ivy, oak or sumac, you will not get an itchy rash. This first contact is what will trigger the allergy, so that you will get a reaction the second time you touch the urushiol.
- Poison ivy and oak can grow right in your own backyard, so look out for it! Poison sumac is more likely to grow in wet, swampy areas.
When a worker bee finds some flowers that have lots of sweet nectar, it flies back to the beehive and "dances" to tell the other workers where the flowers are.- A honeybee queen can lay more than 2,000 eggs every day!
- A bumblebee's stinger is smooth and can slide in and out of the skin. This allows the bumblebee to sting again and again! Wasps, yellowjackets and hornets can also sting repeatedly, since their stingers do not come off in the skin. Unfortunately for the honeybee, its stinger has little hooks that keep it in the skin, which means their stinger comes off after one sting and the bee dies as a result.
- The bumblebee queen usually survives the winter in the nest, while most of the other bees die.
- A large beehive may have more than 50,000 bees living in it! So, keep away from any hives.
- Sugary food and beverages, along with the colors yellow and red attract all kinds of bees!
- Perfume and hairsprays attract bees and other insects, since they often smell like flowers.
- Most bees have very hairy bodies, but wasps have little or no hair!
- Honeybees have little pollen "baskets" on their hind legs. They use these baskets to carry pollen back to their hives.
- Worker bees work very hard, but sometimes they take a vacation and do not work at all for a few days! Even bees need a rest!!!
- There are more than 120,000 different kinds of bees, wasps and ants.
- Bees, wasps and biting ants are the only insects with stingers.
- There is an interesting insect called a "paper wasp." They're called this because they make paper by chewing up wood and mixing it with their saliva. They use this paper to build their nests, which usually hang in a protected area.
- A hornet is actually a big wasp, which can give a very painful sting - so be careful!
- Mosquitoes are attracted to carbon dioxide, which is what we breathe out when we exhale!
- Only the female mosquito bites your skin!
- A mosquito can detect you from up to 90 feet away!
- Most female mosquitoes prefer to lay their eggs in wet and swampy places. This is why you'll find more mosquitoes in Florida than you would in Arizona.
- The color blue attracts most mosquitoes.
- Fire ants will attack anything that disturbs them and can sting over and over!
- Some queen fire ants can lay up to 800 eggs a day.
- An average colony of fire ants can consist of 100,000 to 500,000 worker ants and several hundred winged forms and queen ants.
- Even a jellyfish that has washed up on the shore can sting you if you step on it or touch it!
- The sun's rays are strongest in the summer because we are actually closer to the sun (due to the way the earth is tilted on its axis).
- You can get sunburn in the winter! So you need to take precautions just like you do in the summertime. If you plan on being in the sun for long periods of time, use lots of sunscreen - whether swimming or skiing!
STATS THAT'LL HAVE YOU SCRATCHING
- 9 million doctor visits per year are for itching
- Pruritus, or itching, brings more patients to the physician's office than any other skin disease symptom.
- 30 different types of itches have been identified.
- The anti-pruritic (anti-itch) category of over-the-counter medicines generates more than $200 million a year.
- 50 percent of itching patients have no explanation for their chronic itching.
- A recently published study shows how a unique "itch meter" is the first mechanism to actually measure human itch. (Until now, human itch was hard to quantify because existing measures couldn't distinguish between pain and itch.)
- 90 percent of the U.S. population is sensitive to poison ivy, oak or sumac. Reactions to these toxins account for the greatest proportion of worker's compensation payments related to outdoor injuries.
- Itchy skin can result from too much cleanliness.
- Scratching an itch can actually make it worse, leading to the "itch / scratch / itch cycle" and more itching.
- Itching can be related to stress or nerves.
- There is very little scientific knowledge about itching: people who study itch are called "itchologists."
- Just thinking about itching can make you itch (you probably are right now!)
