Facts About Insects and Bugs
Night butterflies have ears on their wings so they can avoid bats.
Monarch caterpillars shed their skin four times before they become a chrysalis, growing over 2700 times their original size.
There may be as many as 3,000 different kinds of insects — more than all the other animal and plant species combined.
Of the huge numbers of insects, only a tiny amount, one percent, are harmful to humans. Most insects are harmless or actually beneficial. For example, without bees to pollinate flowers, plants would not have a way of reproducing and we wouldn’t have anything to eat!
Locusts can eat their own weight in food in a day. A person eats his own body weight in about half a year.
The earliest fossil cockroach is about 280 million years old – 80 million years older than the first dinosaurs!
The desert locust is the world’s most destructive insect. It can eat it’s own weight in food every day. Large swarms can gobble up to 20,000 tons of grain and plants in a day.
The honeybee has to travel an average of 43,000 miles to collect enough nectar to make a pound of honey!
Out of every 1,000 Mosquitos, one female carries a disease that could be fatal to humans.
Honeybees have hair on their eyes.
The average housefly lives for one month.
There is only one insect that can turn its head — the praying mantis.
A slug has four noses.
Some male spiders pluck their cobwebs like a guitar, to attract female spiders.
A mosquito flaps its wings 500 times a second.
Only male crickets can chirp.
Baby robins eat 14 feet of earthworms every day!
About 80% of the Earth’s animals are insects!
The common garden worm has five pairs of hearts.
Dragonflies can fly up to 50 miles per hour.
The earliest fossil cockroach is about 280 million years old – 80 million years older than the first dinosaurs!
The praying mantis is the only insect that can look behind its shoulders.
One kind of insect called a spittlebug, lays its eggs in a big nest of saliva bubbles. I guess no predator would look for a meal in there!
A snail can sleep for 3 years straight!
The heaviest insect in the world weights 2.5 ounces.
A cockroach can live for up to 3 weeks without its head!
A butterfly has its taste receptors in its feet!
The mayfly only lives for 8 hours!
The female black widow’s poison is 15 times deadlier than a rattlesnake’s!
There are worms in Australia that are over 4 Feet Long!
The weight of all the termites in the world outweigh the weight of all humans 10 to 1!