Bugs & Insects Facts for Kids
Creepy-crawly facts about insects and bugs
Scientists are investigating spider venoms as a source of new non-addictive painkillers — some venom peptides block specific pain channels in neurons far more selectively than current drugs.
A honeybee queen mates with up to 17 drones during her mating flights and stores their sperm in an organ called the spermatheca — she uses this stored supply to fertilise eggs for the rest of her five-year life.
Cochineal, a vivid red dye used in foods, cosmetics, and textiles, is produced from dried and crushed scale insects — it is still commercially produced from insects farmed on cactus plants.
Recent studies suggest bees experience a sleep-like state with reduced antennae movement, and during this time they may replay and consolidate information from the day — a primitive analogue of dreaming.
Hawk moths are among the few insects that can hover while feeding — some species have tongues longer than their entire bodies to access nectar from deep tubular flowers that no other pollinator can reach.
The fundamental three-segment body plan of insects — head, thorax, abdomen — appears to have evolved just once, in an ancestor that lived in freshwater about 450 million years ago.
Giant ichneumon wasps can detect wood-boring beetle larvae hidden deep inside tree trunks by smelling through the bark with their antennae, then drilling metres of wood with their needle-thin ovipositor to lay eggs.
Recent research showed that some bat species avoid fireflies and associate their bioluminescent flashes with bad taste, suggesting fireflies' lights serve a dual purpose of mate attraction and predator warning.
When a bee queen eats pollen containing fragments of pathogens, specialised proteins carry these immune signals into eggs, giving offspring a head start in fighting diseases they haven't yet encountered.
A 100-million-year-old bee preserved in Burmese amber was found carrying pollen on its back legs, providing direct evidence that bee-flower relationships existed even in the age of dinosaurs.