Aviva Trivia

Insect antennae are covered by tiny hairs that detect sounds, smells and chemical messages called pheromones.

Many dragonflies live near rivers and ponds where they can easily hunt other insects like mosquitoes and small flies.

Chewing insects have mandibles, powerful jaws, that allow them to crush, cut and grind their food.

Some insects like moths suck fluids to survive through a long feeding tube called a proboscis. 

Monarch butterflies feed on the poisonous sap of the milkweed plant-birds who then eat the butterflies get quite sick.

Some butterflies use their front legs to clean their eyes instead of for walking.

Tarantulas are not technically insects, but rather, arachnids that include other spiders and scorpions in their legions.

Beetles are the largest members of the insect family with more than 350,000 species known. 

Not all insects are bugs; a true “bug” has a sharp jointed feeding tube much like a syringe. 

The largest ants in the world can be found in Brazil; though, they only measure about 1 1/4 inches long. 

Scientists have documented more than 150,000 species of wasps, bees and ants.

The largest kind of wasp is the hornet-it packs a painful sting.  Their stings have been known to cause cardiac arrest and suffocation.

Worker bees leave the hive in order to collect nectar and pollen from flowers; they store it their rear legs and feed young bee grubs later.

Bee grubs live inside honeycombs that are comprised of six-sided cells made from wax.

The Queen bee is the only bee that can lay eggs; there is only one bee in each hive.

A drone is a male bee or ant.  His only job in life is to mate with the queen.

Killer bees live in colonies with as many as 80,000 other bees; they are quick to get excited and attack in great swarms.

In Africa, army ants can cause the evacuation of an entire village.

Some types of insects undergo a metamorphosis where their body types drastically change such as the caterpillar becoming the butterfly. 

In 1990, about seventy percent of the population of Tanzania was infected with malaria-transmitted by mosquitoes.

Blister beetles, sometimes call Spanish flies, are said to smell like mice.

Botfly larvae hatched in the human body may eat through the eyes causing blindness; this larvae dwells inside the human host for about forty days.

The cockroach has been on earth as far back as 280 million years ago-which means they’ve been on the planet 360 times longer than humans have.

Cockroaches are known to carry such diseases as polio, typhoid, gastroenteritis and hepatitis. 

Kissing bugs suck out human blood to nourish themselves and then leave their fecal droppings behind.  The fecal material of kissing bugs carries Chagas’ disease.

In the U.S. wasps kill more people than snakes, spiders and scorpions combined.

The tsetse fly is found only in Africa although there are twenty-two different specie of the tsetse fly. 

The South American mydas fly is thought to be the largest fly in the world.

by J. A. Young