Insects – Amazing facts

Insects are amazing! They have characteristics, habits and traits which often defy comprehension. Here, we’ve compiled a list of fun facts which demonstrate their versatility and never-ending ability to astound.

· A fear of insects is known as Entomophobia
· Entomophagy is the consumption of insects – by humans – as food
· There are more than 900,000 known species of insects in the world.
· It is estimated there are 30 million different species of insects, making up almost 90% of all living things on the planet.
· Insects would outweigh all other animals by weight.
· The world’s Termites outweigh the world’s Humans 10 to 1.
· About one-third of all insect species are carnivorous and most hunt for their food rather than eating decaying meat or dung.
· Insects have been present for about 350 million years – Humans for only 130,000 years.
· There are more insects in one square mile of rural land than there are human beings on the entire earth.
· The blood of insects is generally yellow.
· Fish and insects don’t have eyelids, instead, they have a hard lens protecting there eye.
· The world’s smallest winged insect, the Tanzanian Parasitic Wasp, is smaller than the eye of a Housefly.
· Insects don’t have noses
· Mexican Jumping Beans, sometimes sold commercially, actually have a caterpillar of a Bean Moth inside.
· Aphids are born pregnant without the benefit of sex. Aphids can give birth 10 days after being born themselves.
· Katydids have ears in their front legs.
· Only full-grown male Crickets can chirp.

· Honeybees have to make about ten million trips to collect enough nectar for production of one pound of honey.
· While gathering food, a Bee may fly up to 60 miles in one day.
· A Bee must visit 4000 flowers in order to make one tablespoon of honey.
· To make one pound of honey, workers in a hive fly 55,000 miles and tap two million flowers.
· Bees have five eyes. There are 3 small eyes on the top of a Bee’s head and 2 larger ones in front.
· Honeybees may collect pollen from as many as 500 flowers, all of the same species – in a single trip.
· Honeybees have hair on their eyes.
· Bees don’t have ears
· Bees cannot recognize the color red.
· A single hive contains approximately 40-45,000 Bees.

· Ants can lift and carry more than fifty times their own weight.
· There are nearly as many species of Ants (8,800) as there are species of birds (9,000) in the world.
· For every human there are about 1 million Ants.
· For more than 3,000 years, Carpenter Ants have been used to close wounds in India, Asia, and South America.
· An Ant can survive underwater for up to two days.
· The animal with the largest brain in proportion to its head is the Ant.
· A Leaf-cutter Ant queen mates once, keeps the sperm viable for up to 15 years and produces as up to 300 million offspring.
· Leaf-cutter Ants don’t eat the leaves they cut, they eat the fungus which eventually grows on the leaf as it decays.
· Ants don’t sleep.
· An Ant has two stomachs, in one it stores food for itself, in the other it stores food to be shared with other Ants.
· Ants in Africa eat more animal flesh than Lions, Hyenas and all other carnivores put together.
· The average life expectancy of an ant is 45-60 days.

· The original name for the butterfly was ‘flutterby’.
· Butterflies taste with their hind feet.
· Butterflies cannot fly if their body temperature is less than 86 degrees.
· It takes about one hundred Monarch Butterflies to weigh an ounce.
· Moths are unable to fly during an earthquake.

· The Cicada makes the loudest sound of any insect.
· Only male Cicadas make their characteristic sound – to attract females.
· Some periodic broods or nests of Cicada larvae live 2-3′ down in the ground for 17 years.

· There are more kinds of Beetles than Plants.
· Beetles are one of the most popular pets in Japan and can be bought in many department stores.
· The strongest creature in the world is the Rhinoceros Beetle. It can lift 850 times its own weight.
· Fireflies are not true bugs or flies. They are actually Beetles.
· Beetles account for one quarter of all known species.

· Dragonflies are one of the fastest insects, flying 50 to 60 mph.
· A Dragonfly has a lifespan of 24 hours.
· A Dragonfly can spot an insect moving 33 feet away.
· Dragonflies have the largest eyes and best eyesight of any insect.

· The brain of a Cockroach is located within its body not its head
· A Cockroach can live for up to 9 days without its head and dies only because of starvation.
· Out of the 4000 known species of Cockroach only 20 types are classified as pests.
· Cockroaches bleed white blood.
· Cockroaches could survive a nuclear war. They can withstand 100 times more radiation than a human.
· Most Cockroach species give birth to live young — highly unusual for insects

· A large swarm of Locusts can eat 80,000 tons of corn in a day.
· Each locust can eat its weight in plants each day
· A desert locust swarm can be over 4o0 square miles in size and contain up of 40 billion insects.
· A Locust can fly for 15 hours non-stop.
· Locusts can eat their own weight in food in a day. A person eats his own body weight in about half a year.

· Mosquitoes have 47 teeth.
· Male Mosquitoes do not bite humans.
· Mosquitoes can beat their wings 600 times a second.
· Mosquito repellents don’t repel – they hide you. The spray blocks the Mosquito’s sensors so they don’t know you’re there.
· Mosquitoes dislike citronella because it irritates their feet.
· It would take over a million Mosquito bites to sap all your blood.
· Mosquitoes don’t transmit HIV.

· The Praying Mantis is the only insect that can turn its head 360 degrees.
· The Praying Mantis only has one ear.
. Mantids are cannibalistic. Baby Mantids will eat other babies, Adults will eat their own or others’ babies, and each other.
. The Mantid’s strike is so fast that it cannot be processed by the human brain.

· Fleas are known to cover a distance of 30 cm in a single leap, ie. twenty times the length of their own body.
· Adult Fleas can live for up to 2 years during which time the female can lay up to 1200 eggs.

· The Housefly “hums” in the key of F
· A Housefly lives for only 14 days.
· Flies have 4000 lenses in each eye.
· Houseflies find sugar with their feet, which are 10 million times more sensitive than human tongues.
· Blow Flies are the first kind of insect attracted to an animal carcass following death.
· The Robber Fly has a beak.

… and for a even more amazing facts from an academic perspective, check out this fascinating website of: Insect Records – from the University of Florida

The information in this list has been compiled from multiple online sources. We can neither verify nor confirm the accuracy of these ‘facts’ so please read them in the spirit they are provided.