Jack Goldstein - 101 Amazing Facts About Insects: ...and Other Arthropods

Title Page

101 AMAZING FACTS ABOUT INSECTS

...and other arthropods

Jack Goldstein

Publisher Information

Published in 2013 by

Andrews UK Limited

www.andrewsuk.com

The right of Jack Goldstein to be identified as the Author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998

Copyright 2013 Jack Goldstein

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Any person who does so may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

Disclaimer: All facts presented in this title were gained from common and reputable sources in print and on the internet. If any detail within this title is found to be incorrect, the author will be happy to publish a corrected version.

Introduction

Did you know that the combined weight of all the insects in the world is twelve times greater than the weight of the entire human population? Or that it takes the pollen from around two million flowers to make just one pound of honey? This fantastic quick-read eBook features 101 amazing facts split into categories such as amazing arthropods, ants, beetles, spiders and many more. So if you want to know what the most venomous insect in the world is, or how many dustmites are in your mattress, then this is the book for you! Find the information you want, fast!

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General Facts

1. Insects are part of the phylum Arthropoda, meaning jointed leg. They are just one class of arthropod, others of which include arachnids and crustaceans.
2. Arthropods are in fact divided into four subgroups - chelicerates (spiders, mites, scorpions etc.), crustaceans (lobsters, crabs, shrimp, woodlice etc.), hexapods (insects and others with a head, thorax and abdomen) and myriapods (millipedes, centipedes etc.).
3. Arthropods are cold-blooded.
4. Arthropods all have segmented bodies.
5. Insects are believed to represent 90% of all of the life on earth.
6. There are believed to be between six and ten million species of insect on the planet.
7. Insects have three parts to their body - the head, thorax and abdomen.
8. They also have two antennae and three pairs of legs.
9. Insects usually go through four life stages: egg, larvae, pup and adult.
10. Arachnids are a type of arthropod which have eight legs.

Honey Bees

1. The honey bee is the only insect that produces foot eaten by humans.
2. A colony of honey bees consists of between 20,000 and 60,000 individuals.
3. It takes the pollen from around two million flowers to make just one pound of honey.
4. As bees go through their lives, they take on different job roles - from cleaning out their cells when they are very young to feeding larvae as they grow older, performing guard duty through their mid-lives, and finally as fully-fledged adults going out to collect pollen.
5. Although bees generally die when they sting humans (due to the barb in their sting getting caught under our skin, which rips it out of their bodies), they can quite happily sting other animals without harming themselves.
6. Honey bees make honey by combining nectar from flowers with enzymes from glands in their mouths. They store this mixture in honeycombs until much of the water has been evaporated, then worker bees cap off the honeycombs. This means that when bees need the food - such as in the winter when nectar cant be found naturally - they can uncap it and tuck in.
7. A beehive always has one queen, who is the sole female responsible for reproducing. She lays around 2000 eggs per day.
8. Queen bees all have different personalities, and amazingly this influences the personality of the entire hive. Some are aggressive, others are passive and some are much harder working than others!
9. Male honey bees are called drones and are purely responsible for mating with the queen - they have no stinger and do no other work.
10. Worker bees are always female. In the course of her lifetime, a single worker bee will produce around one twelfth of a teaspoon of honey.

Amazing Arthropods

1. A normal housefly can beat its wings around 200 times a second - however a midge holds the record for the fastest wingbeat - more than 1000 times a second!
2. The millipede illacme plenipes holds the record for the animal with the most legs - 750 in total!
3. The termite supposedly has the smelliest fart in the animal kingdom!
4. The rhinoceros beetle can carry more than eight hundred times its own bodyweight - that would be like you lifting up a tank!
5. The fastest insect that we know of is the horsefly - one has been measured zipping around at 90 miles per hour!
6. The longest insect we know of is Phobaeticus Chani - a species of stick insect. An example held in Londons Natural History museum was 57cm long!
7. The most venomous insect is the harvester ant. Think of the difference in size between an ant and a rat. Now consider that just three stings from this ant would kill that rat!
8. The longest-living insect is thought to be a termite - specifically a termite queen. They have been known to live for more than fifty years!
9. The largest spider (by size) discovered to date is the giant huntsman spider, found in caves in Laos. Examples have been found with legspans of over 30 cm!
10. The heaviest spider on the other hand is the Goliath Bird eating spider which can weigh more than 70 grams.

Beetles

1. Beetles are the largest group of the 32 orders that insects are separated into.
2. One of every four animals on earth is a beetle.
3. A cockroachs brain is not in its head but in its body. If it happens to lose its head somehow it can still live for nine days - but it will eventually die as it wont be able to eat!
4. The longest beetle is the South American Longhorn Beetle, which is 25cm long!
5. The heaviest beetle however is the African Goliath beetle, which weighs in at 100 grams!
6. Most beetles have a kind of body armour - hard forewings which generally protect their more delicate flying wings.
7. Beetles as an order have been around for around 230 million years - they even survived whatever it was that wiped out the dinosaurs!
8. There are so many different types of beetle, ranging from dull and drab to highly coloured ones such as the ladybirds (or ladybugs) which you will see in your garden.
9. One species of beetle - the whirligig beetle, which swims on water - has eyes which are split halfway meaning they can see above and below the surface at the same time!
10. One beetle with a fantastic name is surely the devils coach horse, which - when it is feeling threatened - raises the rear of its body up and opens its fierce jaws!