Interesting Facts About Insects
- While humans have only been around for 130,000 years, insects have been present for about 350 million years.
- There are about 1.5 million different species of insects in the world.
- A female housefly can lay up to 600 eggs in her short lifetime
- Most flies live an average of 21 days and take on various shapes throughout their short lives.
- The queen of a South African termite species can lay 40,000 eggs per day.
- The total weight of all of the termites in the world is more than the weight of all the humans in the world
- Termite colonies eat non-stop, 24 hours a day, seven days a week
- Termites have wings that they shed once they have found a good place to build a nest.
- Ants can lift and carry more than fifty times their own weight
- There are more than 12,000 species of ants all over the world
- Ants cannot chew their food. They move their jaws sideways, like a scissor, to extract the juices from the food
- Ants don’t have ears. Ants “hear” by feeling vibrations in the ground through their feet
- Of all insects, ants have the longest lifespan. They can live up to 30 years
- The largest spider in the world is a species of tarantula found in South America where one specimen had a leg span of over 11 inches.
- Spiders don’t get caught in their own webs because they have self-oiling legs
- Bed bugs do not spread disease, but their bites can become red, itchy welt
- Bed bugs can feed on the blood of any warm-blooded animal, yet their most common targets are humans
- Male bees have bigger eyes to help them find the Queen Bee.
- The bees’ buzz is the sound made by their wings which beat 11,400 times per minute.
- Honeybees have to make about ten million trips to collect enough nectar for production of one pound of honey.
- All worker bees are female.
- Honey bees must gather nectar from two million flowers to make one pound of honey
- While gathering food, a bee may fly up to 60 miles in one day.
- It takes about one hundred Monarch Butterflies to weigh an ounce.
- Butterflies can smell each other from miles away.
- An adult butterfly has a very short life, living just three to four weeks.
- A cockroach can live a week without its head. The roach only dies because without a mouth, it can’t drink water and dies of thirst.
- Cockroaches can run up to three miles in an hour.
- Cockroaches can hold breathe for 40 minutes.
