CONTENTS
Interesting facts about different orders of insects
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
Coleoptera:
Hemiptera:
Homoptera:
Lepidoptera:
Hymenoptera:
Isoptera:
Mantodea:
Blattodea:
Orthoptera:
Diptera:
Odonata:
Phasmatodea:
Siphonaptera:
Strepsiptera:
(Beetles; lady bird, goliath, hercules, dung, tiger, firefly )
(Bugs; Assassin bug )
(Cicadas)
(Butterfly, Moths )
(Wasps, Ants, Bees)
(termites)
(Praying mantis )
(Cockroach )
(Grasshopper, Cricket )
(House fly, Bot fly, Mosquito )
(Dragonfly )
(Jungle nymph stick, walking stick )
(Flea )
(Twisted wing parasite )
BEETLES (coleoptera)
Beetles
• Beetles taste like apples(40)
• The metallic-colored wing covers of some beetles
are used for jewelry.(2)
Ladybug: (Coccinellidae)
•
•
•
•
Not bugs.
The Ladybird Beetle.(6)
Eats bad insects called aphids. (1)
They may even produce a foul-smelling odor from
a fluid from joints in their legs.(27)
• When threatened, ladybugs "play dead.” (27)
• They are named after the Virgin Mary. 'Our
Lady', who wore a red cloak in old paintings.
The 7 spots are supposed to remind us of the 7
joys and the 7 sorrows.(27)
• In many countries, ladybugs are considered to
be good luck.(27)
• During hibernation, ladybugs feed on their
stored fat.
Goliath beetle: (Scarabaeidae)
• The biggest and the heaviest bug in
the world.
• which can weigh up to 3.5 ounces
and be 4.5 inches long, A big male
can weigh up to 100 grams.(2)
• Goliath beetles can be kept as pets,
just feed them dog food.(38)
Hercules beetle: (Scarabaeidae)
•Strongest animal on earth
Dung Beetles: (Scarabaeidae)
• The female lays a single egg into each ball of dung
and then covers the nest with more dung and
soil.(16)
• In ancient Egypt it was the most important religious
symbol.
• Without dung beetles, the earth would be piled high
with manure.
• It can use polarized moonlight at night to navigate
the way as it rolls a dung ball to a safe spot away
from the pile.
• With a moon, the beetles
rolled their dung balls away in
a straight line. This is the most
efficient path.
• Without a moon, the beetles
could not roll the ball in a
straight line. (16)
Tiger beetle: (Carabidae)
• Voracious predatory sun-loving
insects. (32)
• These have a speed of 25 miles per
hour in short bursts making them
the fastest land insects in the world
• If they chase prey at high speeds, they'll go blind.
• Tiger beetles stop-and-go in their pursuit of prey.
• "If the tiger beetles move too quickly, they don't gather
enough photons to form an image of their prey,”. (32)
Firefly: (Lampyridae)
• Fireflies are also called Lightning Bugs. (24)
• Fireflies are soft bodied beetles
• On the underside of the abdomen it have special
light organs that glows in luminous flashes.
• Fireflies Use Aggressive Mimicry
• Recent evidence also suggests that these female
mimics are not only acquiring food but also
defensive chemicals from their prey, which they
themselves do not produce in large quantities. (24)
• The taillight contains two rare chemicals,
1. Luciferin, a heat resistant substrate, is the source
of light;
2.Luciferase, an enzyme,
• Oxygen is the fuel. A body chemical, ATP
converts to energy and causes the Luciferinluciferase mixture to light up.
• As all living cells contain ATP in a rather
constant concentration, injection of the firefly's
chemicals quickly detects energy problems in
human cells.
• The firefly technique is used to study heart
disease, muscular dystrophy, urology, antibiotic
testing, waste water treatment, environmental
protection and diagnosis of hypothermia in
swine.
• Special electronic detectors, using firefly
chemicals, have been placed in spacecrafts to
look for earth-life forms in outer space. (25)
BUGS (Hemiptera)
Assassin bug: (Reduviidae)
• They get their name because of the speed that
they have to grab and poison their prey.
• The saliva of the assassin
bug starts to work almost
immediately. Cockroaches
die in only 3 or 4 seconds.
• Assassin bugs also transmit a parasite to man
that causes Chagas disease.
• Assassin bugs, known as "kissing bugs,“
• Kissing bugs can be the source of nocturnal
dermatologic wounds in the mid to southern
latitudes in the United States. (8)
CICADAS
(Homoptera)
CICADA
• Cicadas are also called harvest flies or
locusts(54)
• Actually they are not locusts(56)
• The male cicada makes the loudest sound
in the insect world
•After the adults have mated both will die.
•"Music boxes" at the base of the abdomen have no
cover and its eyes and the principal veins of the
wings are red.
•The sudden appearance of the adults in large
numbers has been supposed to foretell war.(54)
BUTTERFLIY
(Lepidoptera)
Butterflies:
• They get their name from the yellow brimstone
butterfly of Europe
• First seen in the early spring or "butter" season
• Taste sensors are located below their feet.
• The color is produced prism-like by light reflected
by their transparent wing scales.
• A butterfly has to have a body temperature greater
than 86 degrees to be able to fly.
• A butterfly can see the colors red, green, and
yellow.(5)
Queen Alexandra butterflies: (Papilionidae)
• The largest butterfly is the
Queen Alexandra's birdwing
butterfly from Papua New
Guinea.
• The wingspan of the butterfly
can reach to be almost one
foot or larger than 26 cm. (5)
Monarch butterfly: (Nymphalidae)
• The fastest flying butterfly which has been
clocked with a speed as high as 17 miles/hr. (5)
• During migration they mate and lay eggs along
the way and at their landing place. (1)
• Lay eggs on the milkweed. The larvae eat the
milkweed.
• Monarch caterpillars shed their skin four times
before they become a chrysalis.(4)
MOTH (Lepidoptera)
Night butterflies:
• It has ears on their wings to avoid bats.(5)
Atlas Moth:
(Saturniidae)
• The atlas moth one of the largest silk
moths, can be mistaken for a mediumsized bat when flying.(2)
Sphinx Moths: (Sphingidae)
• It has impressive speed and sometimes seem
almost birdlike(37)
WASP (Hymenoptera)
Wasp:
 Wasps taste like pine nuts. (40)
Tarantula wasps: ( Pompilidae)
• It paralyzes tarantulas and lay
a single egg on the still living
spider; when the egg hatches,
the wasp larva has fresh food.
• Tarantula has eight eyes but it
can not tell light from dark
and it is also deaf. (21)
ANTS
(Hymenoptera)
Ants
• Ants can carry objects that weight 100 times the
weight of their own body.(2)
• Colony of 40,000 ants has collectively the same
size brain as a human.
• Ant brains are largest amongst insects.
• An ant's brain may have the same processing
power as a Macintosh II computer.
• Some ants sleep seven hours a day.
• The abdomen of the ant contains two stomachs.
• The sense of smell of an ant is just as good as a
dog's is.(18)
• Some birds put ants in their feathers because the
ants squirt formic acid which gets rid of the
parasites.
• The ant, when intoxicated, will always fall over
to its right side.(41)
• Ants really produce antifreeze agents(49)
• One kind of ant is like a dairy farmer. He keeps
little "cows" called aphids. In the winter, these
ants carry aphids into their nests and care for
them. In the spring, the aphids are placed on
plants, where they feed.
• When ants rub the bodies of the aphids a sweet
liquid comes out, which the ants drink.(50)
• When they are not working, they spend much of
their tine making themselves neat.
• They cannot bear anything dead around. If an
insect dies near their hone, a large number of
them gather together to push the body out of the
way.(51)
Army ants: (formicidae)
• Animals the size of horses being
overwhelmed and shredded by
them.(7)
Slave-maker ant: (formicidae)
•The Slave-Maker Ant steals the pupae of other ants.
When these new ants hatch, they work as slaves
within the colony.
Carpenter ant: (formicidae)
• In the Mediterranean, ants are used by surgeons to
close incisions; they are made to bite together an
open wound, and then their heads are severed from
their bodies. Their jaws will remain locked until
the incision heals.(43)
• These ants are known as carpenter ants because
they house their colonies in galleries they excavate
in wood. Carpenter ants do not eat the wood.(4)
Tree ants: (formicidae)
• They build the traps from tree
fibers reinforced with fungus.
• When an unsuspecting insect
encounters the trap, the ants
emerge
from
hiding
underneath and pull the prey’s
legs to immobilize them. Then
they dismember the victim and
carry the parts off to the
colony.(38)
BEES
(Hymenoptera)
HoneyBees (Apidae)
• Bees possess five eyes.
• Honeybees can perceive movements that are
separated by 1/300th of a second. Humans can
only sense movements separated by 1/50th of a
second. Were a bee to enter a cinema, it would be
able to differentiate each individual movie frame
being projected.
• Bees cannot recognize the color red.
• Honeybees are the only insects that produce food
for humans.
• About 8 pounds of honey is eaten by bees to
produce 1 pound of bee wax.
• The average hive temperature is 93.5 degrees.
• One single bee usually visits between 50-1000
flowers a day
• Honeybees have hair on their eyes.
• The brain of the honeybee is superior to the
supercomputer computer by several orders of
magnitude. The supercomputer can compute at
the rate of one billion computations per second.
The honeybee's brain can compute one billion
computations in 1/1000 of a second.(47)
 In the course of her lifetime, a worker bee will
produce 1/12th of a teaspoon of honey.
 To produce 2 pounds of honey, bees travel a
distance equal to 4 times around the earth.(9)
 The energy in one ounce of honey would
provide one bee with enough energy to fly
around the world.(9)
Africanized honey bee: (Apidae)
• The most dangerous bee of all.
• The reason for this is that when
these bees attack, they attack in
swarms.
• Their venom is not any deadlier
than other bees, but, since they
attack in swarms, more stings are
received.
• Africanized Honey Bees (killer
bees) will pursue an enemy 1/4
mile or more.(9,39)
TERMITE
(Isoptera)
Termites
• Lots of people eat termites, winged termites are
very nutritious ,but when lightly fried, reasonably
tasty.
• Termites are important in the diets of many ants,
lizards, birds, and are also eaten by lions and
gorillas(44)
• Wood eating termites, cannot digest cellulose! So
they have flagellates in their intestine. These tiny
flagellates make enzymes that break down the
cellulose of wood and also supply protein. They
digest the wood for the termite.(52)
PRAYING MANTIS
(Mantids/ Mantodea)
Praying mantis:
• The female is green and the male is brown. The
female mantis will consume the male after they
mate.
• Some farmers use praying mantis instead of
chemicals to control pests in their crops. (1)
• Praying mantids are among the few insects which
can rotate their heads so they can literally look
over their shoulders, making them extremely
effective predators.
• The mantids sheds its skin twelve times before it is
full grown.(48)
COCHROACH
(Blattodea)
COCHROACH
• Cockroaches could be used to place surveillance
devices in military installations (11)
• Scientists have actually performed brain surgery
on cockroaches.(19)
• A cockroach can change directions up to 25 times
in a second.
• If a cockroach breaks a leg it can grow another
one.
• The earliest fossil cockroach is about 280 million
years old – 80 million years older than the first
dinosaurs!
• Cockroach can live up to nine days without its
head
• German cockroaches can survive for up to one
month without food and two weeks without water.
(19)
• Some female cockroaches mate once and are
pregnant for the rest of their lives (bummer). (12)
• Cockroaches can run up to three miles in an
hour.(13)
• The world's largest roach (which lives in South
America) is six inches long with a one-foot
wingspan. (12)
Madagascar hissing cockroach:
(Blaberidae)
 large, wingless cockroach from Madagascar.
(11)
 Hissing plays an important role during malemale inter- actions.
 It is one of the few insects who give birth to live
young, rather than laying eggs
 Sailors on infested ships have been known to
wear gloves on their hands while asleep to keep
the roaches from gnawing off their
fingernails.(45)
Cockroaches and “The Bomb”
 During a nuclear war “we die but they live”
Because cockroaches can tolerate a much higher
dose of rems. The lethal dose for the German
cockroach it is between 90,000 and 105,000 rems.
 In truth the amount of radiation that cockroaches
can withstand is equivalent to that of a
thermonuclear explosion.
GRASSHOPPER
(Orthoptera)
Grasshopper
 A more attractive feature of some grasshoppers is
their ability to sing. It's the males that sing. (26)
 Grasshoppers can jump 40 times the length of their
body.(2)
 They can jump on earth in proportion to their
size.(34)
 Short horned grasshoppers have ears in the sides of
the abdomen. Long-horned grasshoppers have ears
in the knee-joints of their front legs. (26)
 Grasshoppers can draw blood with a kick.(33)
CRICKET
(Orthoptera)
Cricket
• Crickets have ears in the knee-joints of their front
legs. (26)
• chirping noise is produced by rubbing its forewings
together.
• The higher the air temperature the greater number
of chirps it generates per minutes.(17)
• Crickets are good temperature reader.(26)
• Some crickets are intelligent, they make a conicalshaped hole that help amplify the sound of their
chirps allowing it to be heard as far as 2,000 feet
away.
Locusts
(Orthoptera)
• Locusts can eat their own weight in food in a day.(4)
FLIES
( Diptera)
House fly: (Muscidae)
• A house fly's feet are 10 million times more
sensitive than a human’s tongue . Flies can "taste"
with their feet(2)
• Hairy and sticky toe pads.(23)
• Carry and Transmit more diseases than any other
animal in the world
• The house fly "hums" in the key of F
Bot Fly: (Oestridae)
• They have delightfully
descriptive names like Horse
Stomach Bot Fly, Human Bot
Fly.
• Human Bot Fly larvae,
burrowing into your brain and
eating your thoughts. (55)
MOSQUITO
( Diptera)
MOSQUITO
 Biting activity increase by 500 times when
there is a full moon.(30)
 Mosquitoes dislike citronella because it
irritates their feet.(36)
 The itch from a mosquito bite can be soothed
by cutting open a clove of garlic and rubbing it
on the bite.(36)
 Mosquitoes are attracted to the color blue more
than any other color.(36)
 A mosquito can detect a moving target at 18 ft
away.
Mosquitoes find new hosts by sight (they observe
movement); by detecting infra-red radiation emitted
by warm bodies; and by chemical signals
(mosquitoes are attracted to carbon dioxide and lactic
acid, among other chemicals).
HIV virus responsible for the AIDS infection is
regarded as food to the mosquito and is digested
along with the blood meal.
The average mosquito has 47 teeth (33)
They can’t survive at temperatures of 50 degrees
and below(42)
DRAGONFLY
(Odonata)
Dragonfly:
• Fastest known insect is a dragon fly that has been
clocked at 58 kilometers an hour.(2)
• Dragonflies can fly both forward and backward.(39)
• They have two sets of wings. They don’t have to
beat their wings in unison. Their front wings can be
going up while their backs ones are going down.
• Names for dragonflies around the world are Old
Glassy from China, Water Dipper from
England.(46)
Jungle Nymph Stick (order:- Phasmida)
• 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. (2)
WALKING STICK: (order:-Phasmida)
• The
eggs of walking stick
insects are among the
largest in the insect world.
• Some eggs are more than
eight millimeters long.
• Longest insect that can
reach a length of 33
centimetres.(2)
Flea:
(order:- Siphonaptera)
• Flea can jump 150 times its size. That is the same
as a person able to jump up 1,000 feet in the air.
Most fleas do not live past a year old (36)
Japanese Giant Hornet: (order:-Hymenoptera)
(Family:-Vespidae)
• It has the size of your
thumb and it can spray
flesh-melting poison. it
eats the bees
TWISTED-WING PARASITE
(order:- Strepsiptera)
• The larval stage parasite will climb a flower and wait for an insect
pollinator.
• Burrow into bee's body, and change into a second-stage larva.
• An adult male parasite will emerge from the host and search for a mate
• He never develops a mouth.
• The adult female remains in the host’s body for the rest of her life,
• Never growing legs or wings.
• She mates by pushing only her reproductive organs outside of the bee’s
body! Her offspring will emerge and look for new hosts.(38)
SUMMARY
ANY
?
THANX FOR
YOUR
ATTENTION
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