Interesting Facts about Insects

There are more insects in one square mile of rural land than there are human beings on the entire earth.

The tsetse fly is found only in Africa although there are twenty-two different specie of the tsetse fly.

In the U.S. wasps kill more people than snakes, spiders and scorpions combined.

Monarch butterflies feed on the poisonous sap of the milkweed plant-birds who then eat the butterflies get quite sick.

The South American mydas fly is thought to be the largest fly in the world.

There are more than 900,000 known species of insects in the world.

Some insects like moths suck fluids to survive through a long feeding tube called a proboscis.

Some butterflies use their front legs to clean their eyes instead of for walking.

More people are killed each year from bees than from snakes.

Beetles taste like apples, wasps like pine nuts, and worms like fried bacon.

A dragonfly has a lifespan of 24 hours.

Each year, insects eat 1/3 of the Earth’s food crop.

The color a head louse as an adult can depend on the color of the person's hair in which it is living.

Worker bees leave the hive in order to collect nectar and pollen from flowers; they store it their rear legs and feed young bee grubs later.

Dragonflies have as many as 30,000 lenses in each eye.

A baby cockroach can run side by side with its parents.

A tabanid fly, related to horse flies, has been clocked at 90 miles per hour.

A cockroach can survive for a month without eating anything but will die within 9 days approximately without water.

Only full-grown male crickets can chirp.

The fastest runners are cockroaches, which can move almost a foot per second. However this only translates to a little over 1 mph.

Mosquitoes dislike citronella because it irritates their feet.

The queen of a termite colony may lay 6,000 to 7,000 eggs per day, and may live 15 to 50 years.

There are grasshoppers that can draw blood with a kick.

Worker ants may live seven years and the queen may live as long as 15 years.

A cockroach can live without its head for about 9 days. After that it dies of starvation.

The total distance of the many trips honey bees travel to produce a pound of honey is about equal to twice the distance around the world.

There are more than 200 million insects for each human on the planet.

Beetles are the largest members of the insect family with more than 350,000 species known.

Not all insects are bugs; a true “bug” has a sharp jointed feeding tube much like a syringe.

The largest ants in the world can be found in Brazil; though, they only measure about 1 1/4 inches long.

Scientists have documented more than 150,000 species of wasps, bees and ants.

Many dragonflies live near rivers and ponds where they can easily hunt other insects like mosquitoes and small flies.

Bee grubs live inside honeycombs that are comprised of six-sided cells made from wax.

Crickets are good temperature reader as its chirps differ according to the weather. People know whether its hot or cold depending on the chirps crickets make.

The Queen bee is the only bee that can lay eggs; there is only one bee in each hive.

The average mosquito has 47 teeth - but it's the mosquito's sharp proboscis that'll make you itch.

A drone is a male bee or ant. His only job in life is to mate with the queen.

Chewing insects have mandibles, powerful jaws, that allow them to crush, cut and grind their food.

Some types of insects undergo a metamorphosis where their body types drastically change such as the caterpillar becoming the butterfly.

In 1990, about seventy percent of the population of Tanzania was infected with malaria-transmitted by mosquitoes.

In Africa, army ants can cause the evacuation of an entire village.

Tapeworms range in size from about 0.04 inch to more than 50 feet in length.

Some worms will eat themselves if they can’t find any food!

The proboscis, which looks like a really long, pointy nose, is the female mosquito's rather effective tool for sharing your blood supply.

Blister beetles, sometimes call Spanish flies, are said to smell like mice.

Fleas that can leap eight hundred times farther than their body length.

Killer bees live in colonies with as many as 80,000 other bees; they are quick to get excited and attack in great swarms.

Cockroaches are known to carry such diseases as polio, typhoid, gastroenteritis and hepatitis.

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