Did You Know?

By Phyllis Barkas Goldman

All the insects in the world weigh more than all the other kinds of animals in the world put together!
In a four-month period, a pair of house flies could have 190,000,000,000,000,000,000 children and grandchildren, but only if they all survived!
The heaviest insect in the world, the Goliath beetle of Africa, weighs just 3 ½ ounces!
Some kinds of beetles are smaller than some protozoans, which are one-celled animals!
A Chinese proverb says "Patience and the mulberry leaf become a silk gown." A silk moth would have to eat ten pounds of mulberry leaves to make one pound of silk cocoons. These cocoons can be spun into a thread more than 100 miles long!
The buzzing sound of a bee is made by its wings moving up and down very quickly.
The female trichogramma wasp lays her eggs inside the eggs of other insects.
Ancient Egyptians awarded The Order of the Golden Fly to people who performed acts of special bravery.
Fly larvae bred in sterile conditions were used in the 1800s to remove diseased tissue from war wounds.
Fireflies were once used as hair ornaments in Brazil.
The largest butterfly in the world is the Queen Alexandria Birdwing butterfly. The female can have up to an eleven-inch wingspan.
Pesky insects of the jungles of Asia brought about the origin of carpets. The natives discovered that sitting on sheep's wool is very effective protection from the crawling insects. Thus the carpet was created to protect them from these critters, who disliked the grease found in the wool.
There are 900,000 to 1,000,000 known species of insects in North America alone.
Honeybees move their wings back and forth about 400 times per second or 26,000 times per minute.
There are 30 million species of insects: 10,000 million insects per square kilometer of inhabitable land, and 200 million insects per person.
A swarm of African Desert Locusts may contain millions of individual insects and may weigh 70,000 tons.
The dragonfly keeps its body cool by resting in a vertical position. It keeps warm by resting in a horizontal position.
The poinsettia whitefly does an enormous amount of destruction to fruit crops, yet it is so small that three of the insects would fit on the head of a pin.
The male African butterfly feeds on mongoose dung in the Kakamege Forest in Kenya.
The female mosquito needs the protein from blood to produce eggs.
Black and orange burying beetles hunt for dead birds, mice, or even snakes. They then bury them so that they may raise their young in "animal graves."
The tiger beetle will grab and stab its prey (usually a small insect) and then drag its food as far as a foot underground so it can be eaten at the beetle's leisure.
The bee-eater, a type of bird, does not get stung when it captures bees. It holds the bee in its beak, and knocks it against a branch of a tree, ridding the bee of its stinger before it is swallowed.
Fire ants have been invading parts of the U.S. Some measure as long as a quarter-inch and build mounds 12-18 inches high! They have virtually devoured a calf unlucky enough to have been born on an ant mound.
The "ptera" in the scientific names for some insects means "wings."
Dragonflies have been around for 300 million years.
The word "medicine" comes from "mead," a honey-based alcoholic beverage, which was used as a remedy in the Middle Ages.
Some people believe that if on a golden beetle's wings there are more than seven black spots, then the corn harvest will be scanty; if there are less than seven black spots, the harvest will be plentiful.
Some mantids, such as the orchid mantis of Malaysia and Indonesia, can disguise themselves as flowers.
The aphid (a plant parasite) does not lay eggs like other insects. The eggs hatch inside the female, producing live young.
Not all insects are bugs. All bugs are insects. The front wings of real bugs look like half wings!
An insect does not have lungs; it breathes through air tubes called tracheae, located throughout the body.
An average beehive has over 50,000 bees.
The poinsettia whitefly does an enormous amount of destruction to fruit crops, yet it is so small that three of the insects would fit on the head of a pin. In California, a swarm of poinsettia whiteflies reduced one produce company's harvest from 750,000 cantaloupes to 25,000.
Although it is illegal, visitors to the U.S., immigrants, and Americans who have traveled to foreign lands sometimes bring exotic fruits and vegetables into the U.S. These foods can carry insects such as the whitefly, the Mediterranean fruit fly, and the Oriental fruit fly, which are extremely harmful to U.S. crops and cause devastating damage.
In ancient times insects were used to dye clothing. The Kermes insect, for example, made shades of red, carmine, and scarlet.
The honeybee and silkworm were among the first creatures to be domesticated by humans.
Fire ants supposedly came to the United States in a freight accident in 1918 off the coast of Mobile, Alabama.
Locusts are able to destroy plant life very quickly because their wings enable them to fly 70 miles a day.
Some Native Americans used to fasten fireflies to their shoes for light for night hunting.
Ticks are not insects, but belong to the same family as spiders and scorpions — the arachnids. (Arachnids have 8 legs, whereas insects have 6.)
Most insect blood is yellow since they do not have the hemoglobin mammals have.
Ants have five noses.
The honeybee comes in more than 300 varieties.
Dragonflies can carry three times their weight, hover in the air, and fly backwards.
Bed bugs were once taken as a cure for malaria.
Many gardeners believe a ladybug in your garden will bring money, but to kill one will bring bad luck.
Because the Southeast Asian Mantid's body resembles a violin in shape, it is nicknamed the "walking fiddle,"
Dragonflies can fly at 35 miles per hour.
Engineers study dragonflies to design aircraft after their aerodynamics.
Only the female mosquito sucks blood.
Fireflies do not use or produce heat to make their light. Instead, the light is produced by a chemical reaction between luciferin, a chemical stored in their abdomen, and oxygen.
Insects use the reflection of the sun or moon in their eyes to guide them. By keeping the reflection at an unchanging angle in their eyes they can travel a straight line.
The female mosquito tracks down her human victims by sensing the carbon dioxide emitted from their breath.
Engraver beetles can kill the trees they burrow into. The trails they leave can make patterns, which is how these beetles got their name.
The mosquito that carries the virus for yellow fever likes to lay its eggs in flower vases.
In some places, insects are not just eaten for nutritional value, they are also cooked and prepared as medicine.
Poisonous leaf beetles may remain poisonous even when they are dried museum pieces.
The grasshopper can leap about twenty times the length of its own body.

Source: Monkeyshines Goes Buggy (The Study of Entomology