Insect Interest

General Facts

2008-05-27T02:21:00.000-07:00

1. Mosquitos have teeth.

2. Female mosquitoes flap their wings nearly 500 times per second.

3. If you take one pound of cob webs and spread them out in one straight line, it will go around the earth 2 times.

4. Did you know that you are more likely to be killed by a champagne cork than a by a poisonous spider?

5. A cockroach will live nine days without it’s head before it starves to death.

6. Butterflies use their feet to taste things.

7. The female preying mantis initiates sex by ripping the males head off.

8. Earthworms have 5 hearts.

9. Some ribbon worms will eat themselves if they can’t find any food.

10. The honey bee is the only bee that dies after stinging.

11. The flea can jump 350 times its body length, that is like human jumping the length of about 7 football fields.

12. The world’s termites outweigh the world’s humans 10 to 1!

13. The katydid bug hears through holes in its hind legs!

General Facts

2008-05-19T02:21:00.000-07:00

Worker ants may live seven years and the queen may live as long as 15 years.
Mosquitoes dislike citronella because it irritates their feet.

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.

If you weighed all the earthworms in the US, they’d be about 55 times heavier than the combined weight of all Americans.

The male gypsy moth can “smell” the virgin female gypsy moth from 1.8 miles away.

Some dragonflies can fly at speeds of up to 50 miles per hour.

The average garden variety caterpillar has 248 muscles in its head.

Cockroaches can survive underwater for up to 15 minutes.

Since the successful launch of space shuttle Columbia on mission STS-90 there have been more crickets in space than humans.

The average caterpillar has 2000 muscles. The average human has 700.

After eating, a housefly regurgitates its food and then eats it again!

Only the female mosquito bites, the male does not.

General Facts

2008-05-11T05:22:00.000-07:00

Monarch caterpillars shed their skin four times before they become a chrysalis, growing over 2700 times their original size.

The common garden worm has five pairs of hearts.

About 80% of the Earth’s animals are insects!

There is only one insect that can turn its head -- the praying mantis.

A flea can jump 130 times its own height.

The fiddler crab can grow a new claw when it loses one of its own.

The Jungle Nymph Stick is one of the heaviest insects. In Malaysia they are often kept by people who feed them guava leaves and use the droppings to make tea.

Some caterpillars store poisonous chemicals in their brightly-colored bodies that make birds sick.

Glowworms have a blue light that shines from their abdomens in attracts smaller insects for food.

Queen bees lay over 1,000 eggs a day; queen termites lay over 30,000 eggs a day.

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

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

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

General Facts

2008-05-01T02:22:00.000-07:00

In a survey conducted on mosquitoes it was noticed that mosquitoes prefer children to adults, and blondes to brunettes.

Only the female mosquitoes bite because they need the protein from blood to produce their eggs and she can triple her body weight with just one meal of blood.

Only full-grown male crickets can chirp.

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

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

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

There are grasshoppers that can draw blood with a kick.

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

Did you know that the Deer Bot Fly, Cephenemyia jellisoni Townsend (the infamous supersonic fly) was reputed by C.H.T. Townsend, that father of "Myiology" in 1926, to zoom from hilltop to hilltop in New Mexico at speeds of up to 818 miles per hour!

Courtship among Balloon Flies is dangerous because the female, when given a chance, will eat the male. To keep his head and get the girl, the male fly resorts to gift-giving, presenting the female with a small, balloon-shaped cocoon. Unwrapping the present keeps the female distracted, giving the male time to love her and then leave her.

A scorpion can have up to 12 eyes.

A caterpillar grows roughly 27,000 times its size when it first emerges as an egg.
Locusts can eat their own weight in food in a day. A person eats his own body weight in about half a year.

General Facts

2008-04-22T02:22:00.000-07:00

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

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

Bees must collect the nectar from two thousand flowers to make one tablespoonful of honey. In its entire lifetime, the average worker bee produces 1/12th teaspoon of honey.

Tapeworms range in size from about 0.04 inch to more than 50 feet in length.
A dragonfly has a lifespan of exactly 24 hours.

In Africa swarms of Locusts may contain as many as 28,000,000,000 individuals. A large swarm may eat up to 80,000 tons of grain and other vegetation in a day.
Amazon ants (red ants found in the western U.S.) steal the larvae of other ants to keep as slaves. The slave ants build homes for and feed the Amazon ants, who cannot do anything but fight.

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

Dragonflies can fly 36 miles (58k) an hour.

A click beetle plays dead by lying on its back, then snaps a hinge, licks his body up in the air, and scuttles away to live another day.

For more than 3,000 years, Carpenter ants have been used to close wounds in India, Asia and South America.

The longest insect is a walking stick that can reach a length of 33 centimeters.
The eggs of walking stick insects are among the largest in the insect world. Some eggs are more than eight millimeters long.

Ants can lift 50 times their own weight. But that's nothing compared with the honey bee, which can lift 300 times its own weight - roughly the equivalent of a person lifting 15 tons.

General Facts

2008-04-15T02:22:00.000-07:00

1. A cockroach can live for about nine days without its head. It could live for its lifetime without head, cockroach actually dies because of not being able to drink water.
2. Dragonflies can fly at speeds up to 30 miles per hour.
3. The color a head louse will be as an adult can depend on the color of the person's hair in which it lives.
4. The cochineal insect, which lives on the prickly pear cactus in the southwestern United States, is an excellent source of natural red dye. The insects are dried and ground into a powder that is cooked to release the maximum amount of color. The powder is then used as a dye for fiber, fabric, and basketry materials. It has also been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for use in food and cosmetics. Most brands of lipstick and some kinds of fruit drinks are tinted with cochineal extract.
5. In the 1960s, animal behavior researchers studied the effects of various substances on spiders. When spiders were fed flies that had been injected with caffeine, they spun very "nervous" webs. When spiders ate flies injected with LSD, they spun webs with wild, abstract patterns. Spiders that were given sedatives fell asleep before completing their webs.
6. The bombadier beetle defends itself by firing a boiling hot spray from the rear of its abdomen. The spray is formed at the moment of firing by mixing chemicals from two glands in the beetle's abdomen. The spray changes instantly into a gas and is directed away from the beetle. The gas irritates the eyes of the enemy and forms a smoke screen which helps the beetle to escape while the enemy is confused.
7. Termites can’t digest wood, the protozoa in their stomach (they eat them when they are younger) actually are the devourers of the wood.
8. Slugs have 4 noses.
9. A dragonfly’s first six months of life are spent underwater. After this time, it comes out of the water, sheds its outer skin, and starts flying, but if it falls in the water after it has shed its skin, it drowns.
10. A leech can drink up to eight time its weight in blood at one sitting.
11. There are more insects in one square mile of rural land than there are human beings on the entire earth.
12. There are more than 900,000 known species of insects in the world.
13. More people are killed each year from bees than from snakes.

General Facts

2008-04-15T02:21:00.000-07:00

1. A cockroach can live for about nine days without its head. It could live for its lifetime without head, cockroach actually dies because of not being able to drink water.2. Dragonflies can fly at speeds up to 30 miles per hour.3. The color a head louse will be as an adult can depend on the color of the person's hair in which it lives.4. The cochineal insect, which lives on the prickly pear cactus in the southwestern United States, is an excellent source of natural red dye. The insects are dried and ground into a powder that is cooked to release the maximum amount of color. The powder is then used as a dye for fiber, fabric, and basketry materials. It has also been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for use in food and cosmetics. Most brands of lipstick and some kinds of fruit drinks are tinted with cochineal extract.5. In the 1960s, animal behavior researchers studied the effects of various substances on spiders. When spiders were fed flies that had been injected with caffeine, they spun very "nervous" webs. When spiders ate flies injected with LSD, they spun webs with wild, abstract patterns. Spiders that were given sedatives fell asleep before completing their webs.6. The bombadier beetle defends itself by firing a boiling hot spray from the rear of its abdomen. The spray is formed at the moment of firing by mixing chemicals from two glands in the beetle's abdomen. The spray changes instantly into a gas and is directed away from the beetle. The gas irritates the eyes of the enemy and forms a smoke screen which helps the beetle to escape while the enemy is confused.7. Termites can’t digest wood, the protozoa in their stomach (they eat them when they are younger) actually are the devourers of the wood.8. Slugs have 4 noses.9. A dragonfly’s first six months of life are spent underwater. After this time, it comes out of the water, sheds its outer skin, and starts flying, but if it falls in the water after it has shed its skin, it drowns.10. A leech can drink up to eight time its weight in blood at one sitting.11. There are more insects in one square mile of rural land than there are human beings on the entire earth.12. There are more than 900,000 known species of insects in the world.13. More people are killed each year from bees than from snakes.

General Facts

2008-04-08T02:19:00.000-07:00

Many insects can carry 50 times their own body weight.

If all the insects in the world were put on a scale, they would out weigh all creatures.

For more than 3,000 years, Carpenter ants have been used to close wounds in India, Asia and South America.

The longest insect is a walking stick that can reach a length of 33 centimeters.

The eggs of walking stick insects are among the largest in the insect world. Some eggs are more than eight millimeters long.

A scorpion can have up to 12 eyes.

A caterpillar grows roughly 27,000 times its size when it first emerges as an egg.

Locusts can eat their own weight in food in a day. A person eats his own body weight in about half a year.

Monarch caterpillars shed their skin four times before they become a chrysalis, growing over 2700 times their original size.

The common garden worm has five pairs of hearts.

About 80% of the Earth’s animals are insects!

There is only one insect that can turn its head -- the praying mantis.

A flea can jump 130 times its own height.

The fiddler crab can grow a new claw when it loses one of its own.

The Jungle Nymph Stick is one of the heaviest insects. In Malaysia they are often kept by people who feed them guava leaves and use the droppings to make tea.

Spider Facts

2008-03-30T02:19:00.000-07:00

Certain female species of spiders such as the Australian crab spider, sacrifice their bodies as a food source for their offspring.
Some male spiders pluck their cobwebs like a guitar, to attract female spiders.
Fried spiders taste like nuts.
The largest spider ever was the Megarachne which had a diameter of 50 cm. The fossil was found in Argentina.
The bite from a black widow spider is not automatically fatal. In fact, less than 1% of all people bitten by this spider run the risk of dying, and most of them are saved with the use of antivenin.
The skeleton of a spider is located on the outside of the body.
Spiders usually have eight eyes, but still they cannot see that well.
There are about 34,000 species of spiders.
Spiders have claws at the ends of their legs.
Only the female black widow spider has a poisonous bite. The male spider's venom is not poisonous and it does not attack its prey.
Of the 35,000 species of spiders, only 27 species are known to have caused human fatalities.

Ant Facts

2008-03-24T02:19:00.000-07:00

Ants don't sleep.
When the only queen ant dies, so does the entire colony, because no new workers are born.
The study of ants is called Myrmecology.
For every human in the world there are one million ants.
The brain of an ant has about 250,000 brain cells.
The sense of smell of an ant is just as good as a dog's is.
Ants can lift an object up to fifty times their body-weight and carry it over their heads. They don't do this with their feet, but with their mouths.
A leaf-cutter ant queen mates only once - just before establishing a new colony. She can then keep the sperm viable for up to 15 years and produce as many as 300 million offspring.

Cockroach Facts

2008-03-20T02:18:00.000-07:00

Scientists have actually performed brain surgery on cockroaches.
German cockroaches can survive for up to one month without food and two weeks without water.
A cockroach can change directions up to 25 times in a second.
If a cockroach breaks a leg it can grow another one.
The earliest fossil cockroach is about 280 million years old – 80 million years older than the first dinosaurs!
Cockroach can live up to nine days without its head.

More Bee Facts

2008-03-14T02:18:00.000-07:00

A honey bee strokes its wings about 11,500 times a minute.
Bees can communicate with other bees by dancing. Their dance can alert other bees as to which direction and the distance nectar and pollen is located.
It takes 12 honeybees to make one teaspoon of honey.
In one trip, a honey bee visits about 75 flowers.
In one day, a queen bee can lay up to 1500 eggs in one day.
In a lifetime, on average a honey bee produces 1/12th of a teaspoon of honey.
Honeybees use the sun as a compass which helps them navigate.
A honey bee has four wings.
A bird called the bee eater in areas of Africa thinks that riding around on the backs of other animals is fun!
The honeybee has to travel an average of 43,000 miles to collect enough nectar to make a pound of honey!

Bee Facts

2008-03-09T05:18:00.000-07:00

Bees fly an average of 13-15 mph.
A bee travels an average of 1600 round trips in order to produce one ounce of honey; up to 6 miles per trip. To produce 2 pounds of honey, bees travel a distance equal to 4 times around the earth.
Honeybees visit about 2 million flowers to make one pound of honey.
During honey production periods, a bee's life span is about 6 weeks.
Just a single hive contains approximately 40-45,000 bees!
Honeybees are the only insects that produce food for humans.
About 8 pounds of honey is eaten by bees to produce 1 pound of beeswax.
Beeswax production in most hives is about 1 1/2% to 2% of the total honey yield.
The average hive temperature is 93.5 degrees.
Queens will lay almost 2000 eggs a day at a rate of 5 or 6 a minute. Between 175,000-200,000 eggs are laid per year.
The speed at which honey bees fly is at 15 miles per hour.
The sole purpose of a drone bee is to mate with the queen bee.
Bees from the same hive visit about 225,000 flowers per day. One single bee usually visits between 50-1000 flowers a day, but can visit up to several thousand.
Honeybees have hair on their eyes.
A colony of bees have to fly almost fifty-five thousand miles and tap two million flowers to make one pound of honey.

More Fly Facts

2008-03-02T02:18:00.000-08:00

The lifespan of a firefly is about seven days. During these days, they are busy trying to find a mate.
Out of every 1,000 Mosquitoes, one female carries a disease that could be fatal to humans.
There are more than 2,400 flea species in the world.
There are approximately 2,700 different species of mosquitoes.
The dragonfly has not changed over the last 300 million years.
Some mosquitoes can beat their wings 600 times a second. A midge fly holds the record, with a wing beat of 1046 times a second.
The average housefly lives for one month.
The fastest known insect is a dragon fly that has been clocked at 58 kilometers an hour.
Flies can "taste" with their feet.

Flies Facts

2008-02-27T02:17:00.000-08:00

A flea can jump 150 times its size. That is the same as a person able to jump up 1,000 feet in the air.
A dragonfly has a lifespan of for to seven weeks.
A housefly can only ingest liquid material. They regurgitate their food to liquefy the food that they are going to eat.
A house fly's feet are 10 million times more sensitive than a human tongue.
The amount of blood a female mosquito drinks per serving is five millionths of a liter.
Dragonflies can fly up to 50 miles per hour.
Only female mosquitoes bite humans. Male mosquitoes live on natural liquids from plants and other resources.
One of the most dangerous insect in the world is the common housefly. They carry and transmit more diseases than any other animal in the world.
Most fleas do not live past a year old.
The itch from a mosquito bite can be soothed by cutting open a clove of garlic and rubbing it on the bite.
Mosquitoes prefer children over adults.
Mosquitoes are attracted to the color blue more than any other color.
A mosquito flaps its wings 500 times a second.
The average life span of a mosquito is two weeks.
The Arctic tern flies an average of 22,000 miles a year!

Wasp Facts

2008-02-20T02:17:00.000-08:00

Wasps that feed on ferment occasionally get drunk and pass out.
Tarantula wasps paralyze tarantulas and lay a single egg on the still living spider; when the egg hatches, the wasp larva has fresh food.
The female yellow jacket wasp lays both fertilized and unfertilized eggs. Female workers develop from the fertilized egg and male drones develop from the unfertilized egg.

Beetle Facts

2008-02-11T02:16:00.000-08:00

The heaviest insect in the world is the Goliath beetle from Africa. A big male can weigh up to 100 grams.
There are more than 300,000 species of beetles, making them the largest order of insects in the world.
The metallic-colored wing covers of some beetles are used for jewelry.

Butterfly Facts

2008-02-05T02:15:00.000-08:00

Butterflies get their name from the yellow brimstone butterfly of Europe that is first seen in the early spring or "butter" season.
Female Queen Alexandra butterflies, from Papua and New Guinea, are the largest in the world, some with wingspans larger than 26 cm.
Butterflies and moths are found on all land masses except Antarctica.
The atlas moth, one of the largest silk moths, can be mistaken for a medium-sized bat when flying.
There are over 2,000 species of butterflies in the rainforests of South America.
Butterflies belong to, alongside with moths to an order called Lepidoptera.
The fastest flying butterfly is the Monarch, which has been clocked with a speed as high as 17 miles per hour.
Butterflies are further divided into 30 orders, the main basis of classification being their wing structure.
The main features of butterflies have in common are:6 legsone pair of antennaea segmented body in which three body parts, a head, a thorax and an abdomen can be distinguished.
Night butterflies have ears on their wings so they can avoid bats.
A butterfly's taste sensors are located below their feet.
The color in a butterfly's wings does not come from pigment. The color is produced prism-like by light reflected by their transparent wing scales.
The largest butterfly is the Queen Alexandra's birdwing butterfly from Papua New Guinea. The wingspan of the butterfly can reach to be almost one foot.
A butterfly has to have a body temperature greater than 86 degrees to be able to fly.
A butterfly can see the colors red, green, and yellow.
The original name for the butterfly was 'flutterby'!
Butterflies belong to INSECTS, which is the largest, most varied group of animals.

Bug Facts

2008-01-30T02:15:00.000-08:00

The male ladybug is usually smaller than the female.
During hibernation, ladybugs feed on their stored fat.
Ladybugs make a chemical that smells and tastes terrible so that birds and other predators won't eat them.
A female ladybug will lay more than 1000 eggs in her lifetime.
There are nearly 5,000 different kinds of ladybugs worldwide and 400 which live in North America.
Bed bugs prefer to hide in cracks and crevices during the daytime and come out to feed on the host's blood at night, usually while the host is sleeping.
The biggest bug in the world is the Goliath Beetle which can weigh up to 3.5 ounces and be 4.5 inches long.
Adult bed bugs are about 1/4-inch long and reddish-brown, with oval, flattened bodies.
Lady Bugs really are not bugs. They are actually beetles and their correct name is The Ladybird Beetle.
Related species, such as the bat bug and bird bug, prefer to feed on bats, birds, and other wild hosts, but will also feed on humans if the opportunity arises or the preferred host dies or leaves the roost.
The common bed bug, whose preferred host is humans, is rarely encountered, presumably because of improvements in sanitation.

Insect Interest

2008-01-24T23:49:00.000-08:00

Welcome to Insect Interest - a blog full of interesting insectile facts - i hope they don't give you the goosebumps ;-)