Do you know which spider is
more venomous than a rattlesnake? How about how many teeth a mosquito
has or which insect is born pregnant? You can find the answer below
as well as some other amazing facts that you might not have known
about insects and spiders.
1. For every person
on the earth, there are two hundred million insects. More insects
can be found in only ten square feet of rainforest than there are
people in Manhattan. One square mile of rural land can hold more
insects than there are human beings on Earth.
2. Over 900,000
known species of insects exist throughout the world.
3. Each year, insects
eat about a third of the world's food crops.
4. In contrast, each
year the average person will "eat" several insects while
they are sleeping. During the average lifetime, a person consumes
about seventy insects and ten spiders during their sleep. According
to some sources, beetles have a taste that is similar to apples
while wasps taste like pine nuts.
5. The Department of
Health and Human Services has set standards regarding how many insect
parts are food can contain, called the Food Defect Action Levels.
Chocolate can have up to eight insect fragments per hundred grams,
while peanut butter can have only sixty fragments. Meanwhile, wheat
flour can have 150 fragments per hundred grams and paprika can have
300 fragments.
6. The smallest insect
in the world, the Tanzanian parasitic wasp, is smaller than the
eye on a housefly. The largest insect is the goliath beetle, which
can grow up to four and half inches long.
7. Slavery is not strictly
a human condition. Amazon ants will steal larvae of other ants to
be their slaves. They depend upon these slaves for their survival
because Amazon ants are incapable of doing anything other than fight.
8. An ant is capable
of lifting fifty times its own weight and is capable pulling
thirty times its own weight.
9. The most dangerous
ant in the world is the black bulldog ant. It lives in Australia
and has killed several human beings. When provoked, it stings and
bites at the same time.
10. There are about
a million ants per person. Ants are very social animals and will
live in colonies that can contain almost 500,000 ants.
11. A flea can
jump about two hundred times the length of their body, which is
about thirteen inches. This is the equivalent to a six foot tall
human jumping nine hundred feet.
12. A cockroach
can live nine days without eating. This is also the same amount
of time that the body of a cockroach can live after its head has
been cut off before it eventually dies from starvation.
13. Mosquitoes
have forty-seven teeth. They do not use these to bite, however.
Instead, they have a proboscis, which is a tubular appendage.
14. Mosquitoes
are more likely to bite children than adults, blonde-haired people
rather than brown-haired people, and people wearing dark clothing.
They are also attracted to people who just ate bananas or finished
exercising. This is because foods high in potassium and exercising
cause your body to release lactic acid, which is attractive to mosquitoes.
15. Citronella does
not repel mosquitoes through its smell. Mosquitoes dislike citronella
because it irritates its feet.
16. Mosquitoes are responsible
causing the most human deaths worldwide than any other animal-almost
two million annually. They do this by transmitting diseases such
as the West Nile virus, malaria, and Dengue fever. Second to this
is the tsetse fly, which kills about 66,000 people annually.
17. Dragonflies
are capable of flying sixty miles per hour, making them one of the
fastest insects. This is good since they are in a big hurry, as
they only live about twenty-four hours.
18. Flies jump
backwards during takeoff.
19. A housefly will
regurgitate its food and eat it again.
20. Termites
outweigh humans by almost ten to one.
21. Termites have been
known to eat food twice as fast when heavy metal music is playing.
22. There are more beetles
than any other animal. In fact, one out of every four animals is
a beetle.
23. The rhinoceros
beetle is the strongest animal and is capable of lifting 850
times its own weight.
24. A spider's
web is not a home, but rather a trap for its food. They are as individual
as snowflakes, with no two ever being the same. Some tropical spiders
have built webs over eighteen feet across.
25. More people are
afraid of spiders than death. Amazingly, few people are afraid of
Champagne corks even though you are more likely to be killed by
one than by a spider.
26. The most poisonous
spider is the black widow. Its venom is more potent than
a rattlesnake's.
27. During its lifetime,
a worker bee will only produce about one-twelfth of a teaspoon of
honey.
28. Honeybees are
more dangerous than snakes. Bees kill more people each year than
all the poisonous snakes combined.
29. Butterflies
have taste sensors in their feet and taste their food by standing
on it. Although all species of butterflies have six legs, some keep
their front legs tucked up under their body most of the time.
30. The butterfly was
originally called the "flutterby."
31. The praying mantis
is capable of turning its head 360 degrees. It is the only insect
that can do this. It is also the only animal on Earth with only
one ear.
32. Crickets
and katydids have ears on their legs.
33. Aphids are
born pregnant and can give birth when they are only ten days old.
34. Only male crickets
can chirp and will chirp faster in warm weather than cool. In fact,
you can determine the temperature by counting the number of chirps
in fifteen seconds and adding it to 37.
35. The average bed
contains between two million to six million dust mites.
Well, that should be enough to keep you up at night
avoiding the dust mites and ensure that you stick to your diet .
. . or learn to enjoy the idea of eating bugs. - Darcy Logan
