This strange insect hides in the sand and can live a year without food or water, yet it sells for a thousand yuan per jin and is very hard to catch

I grew up in the countryside as a child, and I remember there was a large stretch of sandy ground in the village. My father said that when he was little, it was a river, and after the river water dried up it became the sandy ground I knew as a child. Rural living conditions in the past were not as good as they are now. Back then, country kids had no decent toys either, so they could only pick wild grasses in the fields, catch shrimp and crabs in the river to play with, and some country kids would go to that sandy ground, fill a bag with water and pour it on the sand, then build sand castles. You could say this sandy ground was part of my childhood memories.

Because I often went to play in the sandy ground, I discovered a strange little animal there. It would burrow into the sand and bore "whirlpools" all over the sandy ground. Later, after asking my father, I learned that this little animal is an insect called the "sand cow" (antlion).

As for what is interesting about the sand cow, I believe many country kids know. Back then there were no toys to play with, so many country kids would find a thin stick or a bamboo skewer, then insert it down through the center of the "whirlpool" and they could get the sand cow out. It was especially fun.

Sand cows love to burrow into sand. Their usual source of food is other insects that drop down through the small holes in the sand. But what if no insect happens to fall into the hole? You can rest assured, the sand cow's vitality is extremely tenacious. Even without food or water, a sand cow can live for a year. Seen this way, the sand cow is even tougher than those animals that hibernate.

The sand cow usually hides in the sand, but in a particular season each year the sand cow wraps itself in sand, like the cocoon wrapping a silkworm, enclosing itself in sand and transforming into a pupa, and afterwards it becomes an insect and flies off into the free, vast sky. Perhaps the sand cow's life in the sand is all about storing up energy for itself, and when the energy is sufficient, the sand cow is no longer content to hide in the desert, but wants to fly toward a broader world. As a child I did not know all this; I only knew that with a sand cow to keep me company, my afternoons would not be boring.

The sand cow is the larva of the antlion, so the sand cow's nutritional value is very high, and especially important is the sand cow's medicinal value. The sand cow plays a big role in modern medicine, and in treating knife wounds the sand cow's effect is even more remarkable. It is precisely because of the sand cow's medicinal value that sand cows are now very precious; one jin of sand cows can sell for several thousand yuan per jin.

But because sand cows were never numerous to begin with, and added to that people's destruction, sand cows are now even more rarely seen. Even at several thousand yuan per jin, it is very hard to find sand cows anymore.

Dear friends, this kind of sand cow in the rural sand, can you still see it now? If you see it, be sure to protect it well, and by no means destroy it. This thing is very precious. What other secrets of the sand cow do you know? You are welcome to leave a message and share!