100 Interesting Facts About Bugs (Insects)


Bugs

100 Interesting Facts About Bugs (Insects)

  • Only male crickets chirp.
  • Insects are cold-blooded.
  • Silkworms are used as the primary producer of silk.
  • Most insects hatch from eggs.
  • Some cicadas can make sounds nearly 120 decibels loud.
  • The life cycle of a mosquito features four stages, egg, larva, pupa and adult.
  • Female mosquitoes drink blood in order to obtain nutrients needed to produce eggs.
  • Spiders are not insects.
  • There are 36 species of dragonfly found in the UK.
  • Bulldog ants can leap seven times the length of their bodies!
  • Mosquitos are attracted to smelly feet!
  • Some male stoneflies do push-ups to attract a mate.
  • Butterflies taste with their feet.
  • Grasshoppers have special organs in their hind legs that store energy for jumping.
  • A hornet’s favourite food is a…bee!
  • The red postman butterfly develops its own poison by eating toxic plants!
  • A sea skater’s leg hair traps air, enabling it to float on water.
  • Grasshoppers existed before dinosaurs!
  • Ladybirds sometimes play dead to avoid predators.
  • Damselflies have been on earth for more than 300 million years.
  • Greater water boatmen breathe through their bottom!
  • There are approximately 1.4 billion insects for every person on Earth. The total weight of all the insects is about 70 times more than all the people.
  • Scientists estimate that insects make up to 90% of all species of animals on the planet and more than half of all living things.
  • Insects can be found in almost every habitat, from mountain ranges covered in snow to sthe hottest deserts on the planet.
  • Insects have been around for more than 350 million years, longer than the dinosaurs and flowering plants.
  • The largest known order of insects is Coleoptera (beetles), some 300,000 to 400,000 species of beetle have been described to date. The next largest is the Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths), followed by the Diptera (true flies) and then the Hymenoptera (ants, bees and wasps).
  • A ladybird might eat more than 5,000 insects in its lifetime!
  • Fruit flies were the first living creatures to be sent into space.
  • Dragonflies have been on earth for 300 million years!
  • A bee’s wings beat 190 times a second, that’s 11,400 times a minute.
  • The stag beetle is the largest species of insect to be found in the UK.
  • Caterpillars have 12 eyes!
  • One dung beetle can drag 1,141 times its weight – that’s like a human pulling six double-decker buses!
  • A single honeybee colony can produce around 100kg of honey each year – that’s 220 jars!
  • An ant-eating assassin bug piles its victims onto its body to scare predators.
  • Large groups of fireflies sometimes flash in unison.
  • To breathe underwater, the water scorpion uses a snorkel-like tube on its abdomen.
  • Insect bodies have three parts, the thorax, abdomen and head.
  • Insects have two antennae.
  • Insects have three pairs of legs.
  • Some insects, such as gerridae (water striders), are able to walk on the surface of water.
  • Bees, termites and ants live in well organized social colonies.
  • Bees are found on every continent except Antarctica.
  • Ants leave trails and communicate with each other using pheromones as chemical signals.
  • Male giraffe weevils use their long necks to fight each other.
  • The male silk moth is estimated to "smell" chemicals of female silk moths in the air at the ratio of a few hundred molecules among 25 quintillion (25,000,000,000,000,000,000) molecules in a cubic centimeter of air.
  • True flies have only one pair of wings, and sometimes, none at all. A hind pair of "wings" is reduced to balancing organs called halteres.
  • There are about 91,000 different kinds (species) of insects in the United States. In the world, some 1.5 million different kinds (species) have been named.
  • Vladimir Nabokov, a famous Russian author, collected butterflies and actually named as a new subspecies the Kamer Blue Butterfly from the pine barrens of the Northeast United States.
  • A particular Hawk Moth caterpillar from Brazil, when alarmed, raises its head and inflates its thorax, causing it to look like the head of a snake.
  • Houseflies find sugar with their feet, which are 10 million times more sensitive than human tongues.
  • Ticks can grow from the size of a grain of rice to the size of a marble.
  • Approximately 2,000 silkworm cocoons are needed to produce one pound of silk.
  • While gathering food, a bee may fly up to 60 miles in one day.
  • Ants can lift and carry more than fifty times their own weight.
  • Mexican Jumping Beans, sometimes sold commercially, actually have a caterpillar of a bean moth inside.
  • It takes about one hundred Monarch Butterflies to weigh an ounce.
  • When the droppings of millions of cattle started ruining the land in Australia, dung beetles were imported to reduce the problem.
  • Wasps feeding on fermenting juice have been known to get "drunk' and pass out.
  • The queen of a certain termite species can lay 40,000 eggs per day.
  • Honeybees have to make about ten million trips to collect enough nectar for production of one pound of honey.
  • Insects have been present for about 350 million years, and humans for only 300,000 years.
  • Beetles account for one quarter of all known species of plants and animals. There are more kinds of beetles than all plants.
  • Blow flies are the first kind of insect attracted to an animal carcass following death.
  • The term "honeymoon" comes from the Middle Ages, when a newly married couple was provided with enough honey wine to last for the first month of their married life.
  • To survive the cold of winter months, many insects replace their body water with a chemical called glycerol, which acts as an "antifreeze" against the temperatures.
  • There are nearly as many species of ants (8,800) as there are species of birds (9,000) in the world.
  • About one-third of all insect species are carnivorous, and most hunt for their food rather than eating decaying meat or dung.
  • The oldest known fossil of an insect dates back 400 million years and is a springtail.
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