Fun Facts – Insects and Bugs I
- While gathering food, a bee may fly up to 60 miles in one day.
- Ants can lift and carry more than fifty times their own weight.
- The queen of a certain termite species can lay 40,000 eggs per day.
- Ticks can grow from the size of a grain of rice to the size of a marble.
- Insects have been present for about 350 million years, and humans for only 130,000 years.
- There are nearly as many species of ants (8,800) as there are species of birds (9,000) in the world.
- Honeybees have to make about ten million trips to collect enough nectar for production of one pound of honey.
- Male mosquitoes do not bite humans, but rather live on plant juices and other natural liquids from plants and decomposing organic material.
- To survive the cold of winter months, many insects replace their body water with a chemical called glycerol, which acts as an “antifreeze” against the temperatures.
- The term “honeymoon” comes from the Middle Ages, when a newly married couple was provided with enough honey wine to last for the first month of their married life.
(Source: Department of Systematic Biology, Entomology Section, National Museum of Natural History, in cooperation with Public Inquiry Services, Smithsonian Institution)