Bug Facts

1. Ants can lift and carry more than fifty times their own weight.
2. The most dangerous ant in the world is the black bulldog ant. It lives in Australia and has killed several human beings. When provoked, it stings and bites at the same time.
3. There are sixty species of ants in North America.
4. Ants will actually ‘farm’ mealybugs. In return for honeydew, the bugs are given shelter in the form of ‘barns’ constructed by the ant ‘farmers’ from bits of soil. Ants will defend their ‘herds’ from predators. Ants ‘milk’ them by stroking the bug’s abdomen, it responds by exuding honeydew. Source
5. Wood ants squirt acid from the end of their abdomens.
6. Wood ant workers live seven to ten years.
7. The queen ant has wings.
8. Ants have two stomachs one for them and one to feed others.
9. Some ants sleep seven hours a day.
10. The queen ant licks the eggs to make them hatch.
11. The queen feeds her eggs her own saliva
12. The insect with the largest brain in proportion to its size is the ant.
13. There are about a million ants per person. Ants are very social animals and will live in colonies that can contain almost 500,000 ants.
14. Ants can sense earthquakes a day in advance, either by picking up changing gas emissions or noting tiny changes in the Earth’s magnetic field. Source

1. While gathering food, a bee may fly up to 60 miles in one day.
2. Honeybees have to make about ten million trips into two million flowers to collect enough nectar for production of one pound of honey.
3. Honey bees must fly over 55,000 miles to produce one pound of honey.
4. Worker bees make 10 to 15 collection trips per day.
5. A worker bee visits up to 100 flowers during one collection trip.
6. During its lifetime, a worker bee will only produce about one-twelfth of a teaspoon of honey.
7. 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.
8. A dying Yellowjacket releases an alarm pheromone that alerts its comrades. In less than 15 seconds, Yellowjackets within a 15-foot radius will rally to the victim's aid.
9. Africanized honey bees (aka killer bees) will pursue an enemy 1/4 mile or more
10. Bees are capable of seeing ultraviolet light which is invisible to humans.
11. Honeybees communicate direction and distance from the hive to nectar sources through a sophisticated dance "language".
12. Bees use the sun as a compass. Even when the sun is obscured by clouds, bees can detect it's position from the light in brighter patches of the sky.
13. A bee has five eyes, two large compound eyes on either side of its head, and three ocelli (primitive eyes) on top of its head to detect light intensity.
14. Wasps feeding on fermenting juice have been known to get "drunk' and pass out.
15. Honey bee wings flap 11,400 / sec. and fly at 15 miles per hour.
16. Nurse bees heads exude Royal Jelly to feed larvae and the queen.
17. Wax bees secreate beeswax to build hexagonal honeycomb cells.
18. The honey bee has six legs, four wings, a nectar pouch, and a stomach.
19. Honey bees have been producing honey for 10 to 20 million years.
20. Modern science says it is aerodynamically impossible for bees to fly.
21. A beehive appears on the Utah state seal, Utah is the beehive state.
22. An estimated 220,000 U.S. beekeepers manage 3.2 million bee hives.
23. Honey bees dance to communicate direction and distance of flowers.
24. Annually a bee hive makes more than 400 lbs. honey and 40 lbs. pollen.
25. Worker honey bees, the girls, live 6 to 8 weeks and do all the work.
26. Drone bees, the boys, have no stingers, and do no work, only mating.
27. Queen bees, only one per hive, lay up to 2,500 eggs per day.
28. Bees are insects in the scientific order Hymenoptera as Apis mellifera
29. Apitherapy; uses bee venom, and bee products for medicinal purposes.
30. Honey consumption per capita in the U.S.,1.1 lbs., in Germany 9.5 lbs.
31. It takes one ounce of honey to fuel a bee's flight around the world.
32. Honey bees are environmentally friendly and are vital as pollinators.
33. U.S.D.A. estimates about 1100 honey bee stings are required to be fatal.
34. Honeybees are more dangerous than snakes. Bees kill more people each year than all the poisonous snakes combined.

1. With over 300,000 different species, one out of every four animals on earth is a beetle.
2. Mother Dung Beetles tenderly care for their young by cleaning away toxic molds and fungi off the dung balls where her larva lives and feasts.
3. The metallic-coloured wing covers of some beetles are used for jewelry.
4. The heaviest insect in the world is the Goliath beetle from Africa? A big male can weigh up to 100 grams.
5. Lightningbugs or Fireflies are not true bugs or flies. They are actually beetles.
6. There are over 2000 species of fireflies living in the tropical and temperate regions.
7. There are nearly 5,000 different kinds of ladybugs worldwide and 400 which live in North America.
8. A female ladybug will lay more than 1000 eggs in her lifetime.
9. Ladybugs make a chemical that smells and tastes terrible so that birds and other predators won't eat them.
10. Some wood beetles can emerge from wood where they live after as long as 40 years
11. Spanish Flies are not flies and do not make good aphrodisiacs. They are beetles and the only thing they produce is a toxic chemical called cantharidin that is recommended for little more than the treatment of warts.

1. It takes about one hundred Monarch Butterflies to weigh an ounce.

2. A tagged Monarch butterfly was released near Ontario, Canada and was recovered 4 months later in Angangueo , Mexico. The straight line distance between these two sites is 2,133 miles.
3. Sphinx moths, or hawk moths, have been measured at 53 km/h. However, a horsefly (Hybomitra hinei wrighti) was recently clocked at 145 km/h! More research needs to be done in order to determine the fastest insect
4. Female Queen Alexandra butterflies, from Papua and New Guinea, are the largest in the world, some with wingspans larger than 26 cm.
5. The atlas moth, one of the largest silk moths, can be mistaken for a medium-sized bat when flying.
6. One Species of moth lives entirely on cow tears
7. Butterflies taste with their feet.

1. Out of the 4000 known species of cockroach only 20 types are classified as pests.
2. Cockroaches' favorite food is the glue on envelopes and on the back of postage stamps.
3. A German cockroach can survive a month or more without food...but less than two weeks without water.
4. A cockroach’s head will live and respond for at least 12 hours after the animal has been decapitated.
5. One female cockroach can produce two million offspring in one year. Average breeding session produces 35,0000 offspring.
6. Some female cockroaches are devoted mothers, carrying their offspring in little pouches like kangaroos. One species even nourishes her young in the uterus with a milk rich in protein, carbohydrates, and fat.
7. The largest cockroach is Megaloblatta longipennis of Columbia (that name is not a joke...honest). The largest specimen ever recorded was a female that measured 3.81 inches long by 1.77 inches across!
8. The fastest land moving insects are the tropical cockroaches. They can move 50 body lengths per second. This would be equivalent to a human sprinter running the 100 yard dash in 1 second or approximately 200MPH!

1. The largest known variety of flea is Hystrivhopsylla schefferi. This species of flea is known from only one specimen taken from the nest of a mountain beaver. It was 1/3 of an inch long!
2. A flea can jump 130 times its own height
3. A female flea sucks up to 30 times her weight in blood per day and excretes six times her weight in flea baby food
4. The champion jumper is the cat flea. It has been known to leap to a height of 34 inches subjecting itself to over 200 g's!
5. There are 1,830 varieties of fleas.
6. Cat and dog fleas are closely related, but separate species. Cat fleas may be found on dogs.

1. Scientists believe the Mayfly is the most primitive present-day insect around. These insects are the most popular models for artificial flies.
2. A midge fly holds the record, with a wing beat of 1046 times a second.
3. Houseflies find sugar with their feet, which are 10 million times more sensitive than human tongues.
4. The house fly "hums" in the key of F
5. Flies like heat, light, low wind.
6. Adults live for about a month and produce 500 to 2,000 eggs in their life.
7. Flies are attracted by odors, and usually enter a building through open doors and windows near garbage and food.
8. Deer flies will bite a hole in your skin with their strong mandibles, put a little saliva-like material in the wound to keep the blood from clotting and lap up the blood with a sponge-like proboscis .
9. Beginning with one pair of house flies in April, there would be a total of 191,000,000,000,000,000,000 flies by August if all the descendants of this pair lived and reproduced normally.
10. The average airspeed of the common housefly is 4.5 miles per hour.

1. Many people mistakenly think that pillbugs are insects but in fact, pillbugs are crustaceans as are lobsters, shrimp, and crabs. Both insects and crustaceans are classified in a larger group known as the arthropods. Arthropods are animals with exoskeletons and jointed appendages.

2. Pillbugs are classified in a group of crustaceans known as isopods. There are about 4000 species of identified isopods. Most isopods live in marine habitats, some live in fresh water, and a few like pillbugs live on land.

3. Some land isopods roll up in a ball or pill when disturbed, hence the term pillbug. Other names for pillbugs are sow bugs, wood lice, potato bugs, and roly-pollies. Roller is a term used to describe a pillbug that rolls up in a ball. Hiker is a term used to describe a pillbug that runs when disturbed.

4. Pillbugs don't urinate.
Most animals must convert their wastes, which are high in ammonia, into urea before it can be excreted from the body. But pillbugs have an amazing ability to tolerate ammonia gas, which they can pass directly through their exoskeleton. So, there's no need for pillbugs to urinate.

5. A pillbug can drink with its anus.
Though pillbugs do drink the old-fashioned way – with their mouthparts – they can also take in water through their rear ends. Special tube-shaped structures called uropods can wick water up when needed.

6. Pillbugs curl into tight balls when threatened.
Most kids have poked a pillbug to watch it roll up into a tight ball. In fact, many people call them roly polies for just this reason. Its ability to curl up distinguishes the pillbug from another close relative, the sowbug.

7. Pillbugs eat their own poop.
Yes indeed, pillbugs munch on lots of feces, including their own. Each time a pillbug poops, it loses a little copper, an essential element it needs to live. In order to recycle this precious resource, the pillbug will consume its own poop, a practice known as coprography.

8. Because pillbugs breathe through gill-like structures, they must live in moist places. They prefer dimly lighted or dark habitats and live underneath rocks, logs, boards, leaves, etc. They eat decaying wood, leaves, and other vegetation.

9. Pillbugs are 5 to 15 mm long and have three body regions; head, thorax, and abdomen. Most of the pillbug's exoskeleton consists of shield-like plates. The body is flattened laterally. Each of the seven pairs of legs is identical. There is one pair of antenna and one pair of compound eyes.

10. The young hatch from eggs that are carried in a brood pouch under the thorax of the female. The young are self-sufficient after hatching.

11. Pillbugs grow by molting. They shed their exoskeleton and grow a new one. During molting pillbugs crawl out of the back half of the old exoskeleton first, and a few days later crawl out of the front half.

12. Pill bugs are safe to handle. They do not bite, sting, or transmit diseases to humans. They do not harm other plants or animals. They are not economically important, but they play an important role in decomposing dead plant material.

1. Praying mantis are among the few insects which can rotate their heads so they can literally look over their shoulders.
2. In some species of praying mantis, the female begins to eat the male while they are mating. She starts at his head and by the time she reaches his abdomen, mating is completed.
3. There are about 1,700 varieties of praying mantis.
4. The female mantis lays up to 300 eggs.
5. The mantis will attack butterflies, bees, beetles, frogs, spiders, mice, lizards, and small birds.
6. The mantis has very good eyesight.
7. The mantis sheds its skin twelve times before it is full grown.
8. The only insect that can turn its head 360 degrees is the praying mantis.

1. Mosquitoes kill about 2 million people a year.
2. The mosquito's visual picture is an infrared view produced by its prey's body temperature.
3. The average life span of the female mosquito is 3 to 100 days; the male's is 10 to 20 days.
4. Mosquito adults feed on flower nectar and juices of fruits for flight energy.
5. The female requires a blood meal for egg development
6. You will never get bit by a male mosquito. Only the females bite!
7. Mosquitoes must dilute the blood of their victim with their saliva before they can drink it. It is the saliva that causes the bite to itch
8. The mosquito matures from egg to adult in 4 to 7 days.
9. Most mosquitoes remain within 1 mile of their breeding site.
10. There are 140 different kinds of mosquitoes in the world.
11. Mosquitoes are attracted to the carbon dioxide we breath out from our mouths.
12. Citronella does not repel mosquitoes through its smell. Mosquitoes dislike citronella because it irritates its feet.

1. The Brazilian wandering spiders are the most venomous spiders in the world.
2. Tarantual wasps paralyze tarantulas and lay a single egg on the still living spider; when the egg hatches, the wasp larva has fresh food.
3. Tarantulas can live 30 years
4. the average spider web weighs 1/2000th of an ounce.
5. Some species of baby spiders that bite off the limbs of their mothers and slowly dine on them over a period of weeks. Researchers hypothesize the maternal sacrifice keeps the young from eating one another.
6. The average spider can travel up to 1.17 miles per hour.
7. More people are afraid of spiders than death. Amazingly, few people are afraid of Champagne corks even though you are more likely to be killed by one than by a spider.
8. The most poisonous spider is the black widow. Its venom is more potent than a rattlesnake's.

1. There are twenty-one hundred species of termites.
2. Some termites workers have no eyes.
3. A queen termite can lay thirty thousand eggs a day.
4. The queen of an African termite species can grow as large as 5 inches and lay as many as 30,000 eggs a day.
5. Some termites queens are reported to live for 50 years, although the average age is nearer to 15.

1. Other Bugs

1. Aphids are born pregnant and can give birth when they are only ten days old.

Scorpions can live for more than a year without eating.

1. The exoskeleton of a scorpion, made of chitin, reflects back ultraviolet rays and will glow pink or green under the moonlight or a black light. Fossilized scorpions still glow under ultraviolet after 300 million years.
The fastest known insect is a dragon fly that has been clocked at 58 kilometres an hour
2. Dragonfly larvae use their jet butts to help them catch and eat up to 300 mosquito larvae a day.
3. Living scorpions reflect ultraviolet light and can glow with an eerie greenish colour when exposed to UV light, no matter what colour they appear under normal lighting conditions.
4. 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.
5. The longest insect is a walking stick that can reach a length of 33 centimetres
6. The eggs of walking stick insects are among the largest in the insect world. Some eggs are more than eight millimetres long.
7. The song of the field cricket is temperature dependent; the tone and tempo drop with the drop in temperature. Count the chirps in 13 seconds, add 40, and you will have the approximate temperature in degrees.
8. The male cicada may be the loudest insect known. The mating sound can be heard as far as 440 yards.
9. A centipede in southern Europe has 177 PAIRS of legs
10. Some species of mayfly's eggs can take up to 3 years to hatch. Then have a lifespan of about 6 hours
11. If one places a tiny amount of liquor on a scorpion, it will instantly go mad and sting itself to death.
12. 100 grams of the bug cricket contains: 121 calories, 12.9 grams of protein, 5.5 grams of fat, and 5.1 grams of carbohydrates.
13. The average bed contains between two million to six million dust mites.

1. Based on various sampling, the total number of insect species is between 15 and 30 million.
2. 7,000 new insect species are discovered every year.
3. three body parts - a head, thorax, and abdomen
4. six jointed legs
5. two antennae to sense the world around them
6. an exoskeleton (outside skeleton)
7. All insects are bugs but not all bugs are insects. An Insect has three body parts; a head, thorax, and abdomen. Insects have six legs and two antennae. Spiders and Scorpions have eight legs and are not considered insects.
   95% of all the animal species on the earth are insects!
   Over one million species have been discovered by scientists, and they think that there might be ten times that many that haven't been named yet!
   No one really knows why insect like light. Most scientists think that bright lights confuse the insects' guidance systems so they can't fly straight any more.
   Insects breathe through holes in the sides of their bodies
   The weight of all Americans is less than one fiftieth of the insects, earthworms, and spiders in the United States.
   Insects date back to over 300 million years!
8.  In 1875 a swarm of locusts 1800 miles long and 110 miles wide swarmed through the western U.S., causing $200M in crop damage. At 12.5 trillion insects, it was the largest concentration of animals ever seen. Less than 30 years later the species had vanished, and was declared extinct in 1902.  Source