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Q: How many insects are in the world?
A: If you are talking about the number of different kinds of insects in the world,
a good scientific estimate is that there are 1,017,018 species of insects in the world. Wow! That means you could spend your whole life looking at different kinds of insects and never see them all.
Q: What insect lives the longest?
A: Tarantulas can live 30 years; a queen termite has been known to live 50 years; and there are, of course, the 17-year locusts. Most bugs live less than a year and are seasonal. However, some wood beetles can emerge from wood where they live after as long as 40 years!! In one recorded case, the beetles came out of wood that had long ago been cut down and made into a bookshelf!
Q: Why do insects like light?
A: No one really knows. Most scientists think that bright lights confuse the insects' guidance systems so they can't fly straight any more.
Q: What is the largest insect?
A: In the book Beetles by Bernard Klaustnizer, there is a beetle called the South American longhorn beetle (Tytanus giganteus) that measures 25 cm! The heaviest insect is probably the African goliath beetle (Megasoma elephas), weighing up to 3.4 oz. And the longest insect is a huge stick insect (Pharnacia serritypes). The females can be over 36 cm in length!!
Q: Do insects have blood and do they bleed when they are hurt?
A: Insects have blood, but it's not like our blood. Our blood is red because it has hemoglobin, which is used to carry oxygen to where it is needed in the body. Insects get oxygen from a complex system of air tubes that connect to the outside through openings called spiracles. So instead of carrying oxygen, their blood carries nutrients from one part of the body to another. They do bleed when they are hurt, and their blood can clot so they can recover from minor wounds.
Q: Why do insects drown in water?
A: Not all insects drown in water. In fact, quite a few live there for at least part of their lives. Insects breathe through holes in the sides of their bodies. If they can't get air in through the holes, they will suffocate. That's why insects that are not specialized for living in water will die in water. But dragonfly nymphs, mosquito larvae, and water beetles all live in water quite happily!
Certain types of fleas may be trained to perform various feats such as jumping through hoops, juggling, and pulling objects several hundred times their weight.
Certian large spiders are very powerful and can kill small birds, rats, fish, and other small animals.
If you weighed all the ants in the world, the total weight is more than all the people put together.
Roaches
Cockroaches have inhabited the earth for more than 250 million years.
The average roach-infested household contains more than 20,000 roaches.
Roaches can live up to 20 days without food and 14 days without water.
They can flatten their bodies and crawl through a crack thinner than a dime.
They'll eat anything -- food, leather, hair, and the glue in book bindings.
They can live off the toothpaste residue in your toothbrush.
They can survive radiation up to 12 time greater than humans.
Roaches have been implicated in the spread of tuberculosis, leprosy, cholera, dysentery and typhoid.
Roaches are startled by the smallest of air movements and can run for cover in less than .05 seconds.
There are over 3,000 kinds of cockroaches, including the devastating Asian Roach, which has migrated to this country.
They are cannibals and take a particular liking to each others' excrement.
In extreme cases roaches will feed off people.
Cockroaches can transmit a wide variety of diseases and cause common allergic reactions previously thought to be caused by dust.
One of every five living species is a beetle.
Fire ants can find their way back to the nest in full darkness using an internal compass. According to resarchers, they consume very small amounts of a natural mineral called magnetite which functions as a compass.
African weaver ants can haul prey weighing more than 1,000 times their own weight up trees to their nests mainly through the aid of large adhesive pads on each foot.
When provoked, the bombardier beetle swivels the tip of its abdomen and shoots a jet of boiling chemicals at its attacher. The chemicals are produced in a "reaction chamber" causing an explosion you can actually hear. The spray of foul-smelling, hot vapors shoots out at 500 to 1,000 pulses per second at a temperature of 100°C.
The beautiful, iridescent colors of butterfly wings are a result of the way the tiny over-lapping scales covering the wings reflect light. The beauty is dependent on structure, not pigment.
The largest known butterfly, Queen Alexandra's Birdwing of New Guinea, has a wingspan of about 11 inches. The smallest with a wingspan of only 1/2 inch is the Dwarf Blue from Africa.
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