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The Ladybug has something of a strange life cycle and one that surprises many people. From egg to fully grown ladybug, join us on a journey of a lifetime - literally!

The ladybug will always try and mate as close to a colony of aphids as possible. The ladybug loves aphids and will eat many of them each day.

There is a picture whizzing around the internet at the moment of Brutus the three legged Australian crocodile taken by Katrina Bridgeford.  You can see it here but as it is copyrighted to Ms Bridgeford we won’t put it directly on Ark in Space. Naysayers are maintained that Photoshop was used in the picture but experts have said that it is, in fact, quite real.

So, we thought we would do a little research on Brutus and we came up with this!  Flickr User Lukinosity says about Brutus: “That croc looks an awful lot like the one we saw on our trip up north. He very nearly got our sweet little dog Charlie. I wish I had gotten a better snap of him, but it all happened so quickly.”

So, it seems that Brutus not only has a taste for scraps thrown by tourist guides but may have a taste for the occasional terrier too.  We must hasten to add here that Charlie survived this brush with the crocodile and was quite unfazed by his experience! Here's a lovely shot of him below - no Photoshop involved!

If you are squeamish, don’t watch this.  If you are even vaguely scared of snakes – or rats – don’t watch this.  If you are a full on ophiophobe do not watch this – and if you are remotely musphobic - perhaps it is not so much of a good idea either = even though the rat in the video gets it big time.

This is nature, tooth and claw.  You may think that feeding a live rat to a snake constitutes animal cruelty but the snake, a ball python, will not eat anything that is dead already. 

The rat has been bred for a single purpose – the whole point of its life was its death.  Perhaps that is hard to stomach but this remains a fascinating piece of footage by Jonathan Allen.  The fact it is in fast motion enables us to watch the ball python devour its prey in a way which would ordinarily take much longer to watch.  Not for the faint hearted, for sure.

OK, OK, so that is perhaps a slightly over the top headline, but news has just reached us that the humble water vole may not be the one hundred percent vegetarian that we thought they were. Ratty from The Wind of the Willows has, it seems, been munching on a certain delicacy usually associated with our French friends over La Manche.

You have probably guessed it – the water voles of the UK have been making a meal out of frog’s legs. Being the tidy creatures they are they deposit the remains of their meals in neat little piles by the water’s edge. Over at the Kennet and Avon Canal in Berkshire ecologists for British Waterways have found the remains of frogs in these piles. Good grief, what next? Will they take up ice skating perhaps (then again, they already have according to the picture above).

However, there is a somewhat macabre side to this tale. It seems that it is only the legs of the frogs that have been removed and eaten – the rest of the carcass remains intact. It is almost as if some later day voley Hannibal Lecter type has insinuated his way in to the once completely herbivorous community. Quick, grab a thumb sized muzzle!  Do you hear the screaming of the tadpoles, Clarice?

To be fair, the farfetched thought of the voles going on a mad frog devouring rampage is a little over the top (but funny nonetheless) as they are timid little creatures. There is no weird Ratty serial killer – the water voles can probably simply not manage the rest of the frog and so go for the easiest meat, the legs. However, eco-heads are scratching as to the reason why the water voles in this area have suddenly abandoned their once blissfully meat free veggie existence.

The answer is babies. It is thought that the voles have taken to eaten frogs as they are short of protein in their diet. It is the breeding season at the moment and the clever chaps from British Waterways think that they are trying to supplement their diet with a little extra protein while preparing for the next generation.

Poor little guys – from once thriving population of eight million in the UK it is believed that there are only a few hundred thousand of the fascinating small mammals left. As such it is one of the fastest declining mammals in the UK. To blame for that we have (as usual) ourselves to thank. Oh and just in case you are thinking RAT! then calm down dear (it's only a commervole).  Yes, the water vole is a rodent but it belongs to a different family altogether from Rattus rattus.

In 1929 the mink was introduced from North America by people who sought to farm the animals for their fur, nasty people that they were. Some escaped, bred and spread and the real victim turned out to be not the displaced mink but poor old Ratty. Who then can blame the little guys for trying out a little exotic cuisine?