Interesting & Amazing Facts
Insects
Ants
* An ant can survive for up to two weeks underwater.
* Ants don't sleep.
* Worker ants may live seven years and the queen may live as long as 15 years.
* Leaf-cutter ants can build anthills 16 feet deep and over an acre square.
Aphids
Aphids are born pregnant without the benefit of sex. Aphids can give birth 10 days after being born themselves.
Bees
* Out of 20000 species of bees, only 4 make honey.
* In its entire lifetime, the average worker bee produces 1/12th teaspoon of honey.
* The honeybee kills more people world-wide than all the poisonous snakes combined.
* Queen bees only sting other Queen bees.
Beetles
There are more than 300,000 species of beetles, making them the largest order of insects in the world.
Butterfly
The original name for the butterfly was flutterby.
Cockroach
If you cut off the head of a cockroach, it can still survive but will eventually die, but only because it cannot eat without its head.
Fleas
* A flea can jump 130 times its own height.
* Fleas can accelerate 50 times faster than the space shuttle.
Flies
* Assuming that all the offspring survived, 190,000,000,000,000,000,000 flies could be produced in four months by the offspring of a single pair of flies.
* Flies can "taste" with their feet.
* After eating a housefly regurgitates its food and then eats it again.
Grasshoppers
If a grasshopper is hungry enough, it will eat the paint off a house.
Katydid Bug
The katydid bug hears through holes in its hind legs.
Locusts
There are locusts that have an adult life-span of only a few weeks -- after having lived in the ground as grubs for fifteen years
Miscellaneous
* In rural areas, there are more insects in 1 square mile than there are humans on earth
* There are between 10 million and 30 million species of insects in the world, of which only one million are known to science.
* Each year, insects eat 1/3 of the Earth's food crop.
* The total weight of all insects on Earth is twelve times greater than the weight of all people.
Mosquitoes
* A mosquito has 47 teeth.
* Mosquito repellents don't repel, they hide you. The spray blocks the mosquitoes sensors so they don't know you're there.
* Of all the animals on earth the mosquito has contributed to the deaths of more people than has any other animal.
* The Anopheles mosquito, which carries the malaria parasite Plasmodium is responsible for half of the human deaths in history, outside of war and accidents, since the stone age.
* Only female mosquitoes bite.
* Mosquitoes can beat their wings up to 600 times a second.
Moths
* Moths are not really attracted to light, they fly towards the blackest point which is behind the light.
* The atlas moth, one of the largest silk moths, can be mistaken for a medium-sized bat when flying.
* The silkworm moth (Bombyx mori) is the only completely domesticated insect. They are no longer found in the wild and have been cultivated for so long that they cannot fly.
* Adult moths do not eat cloth, it is their larva that does. The moth lays it's eggs which develop into larvae on your clothes which eat tiny parts of the cloth as they develop.
Praying Mantis
* The male praying mantis cannot copulate while its head is attached to its body. The female initiates sex by ripping the male's head off.
* The praying mantis is the only insect that can turn its head.
Slugs
Slugs have 4 noses.
Snails
Snails can sleep for 3 years without eating.
Spiders
* A strand of spider web may be stronger than an equal diameter of steel.
* The black widow spider can devour as many as twenty 'mates' in a single day.
* There is a member of the spider family called the demodex folliculorum that lives at the root of people's eye lashes. It's harmless and normal.
* The venom of a female black widow spider is more potent than that of a rattlesnake.
* The venom in a Daddy Long-Legs spider is more poisonous than a Black Widow's or a Brown Recluse, but they cannot bite humans because their jaws won't open wide enough.
* A spider's blood is transparent.
Termites
* The world's termites outweigh the world's humans 10 to 1.
* Queen termites can lay an egg every second, or 86,000 eggs per day.
Wasps
Tarantula wasps paralyze tarantulas and lay a single egg on the still living spider; when the egg hatches, the wasp larva has fresh food.
Worms
* The Ribbon worm will start eating itself to avoid starvation.
* Worms can have up to ten hearts.