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What do insects look like? How long do insects live? How many kinds of insects are there? Find all this information in our web sites and more.
An insect has six legs. Also it has three parts to its body. A head, a thorax, and an abdomen. Insects have one pair of antennas at the front of its head. Most insects have one or two pairs of wings. These are ways you can tell if it is an insect or not just a bug.
Insects were probably the first animals to fly. They developed wings millions of years before bats and birds. Because of their wings they are able to survive.
There is about 7000,000 different kinds of insects that people know about and more are being discovered every year.
Insects live almost everywhere around the world. Some live in underground caves and some live on top of the world's LARGEST mountains. Also some live on the surface of the water or in dry deserts. Some live in water at 120 degrees F, but others live in Antarctica. One insect has the ability to live in vinger and another in salty lakes. Insects can live in many different places. This is one of the many different reasons why insects have remained on Earth for over 300,000,000 years.
There is no average length of life for an adult insect. One insect's life maybe very short. Like May flies live for less than a day. During their life they don't eat. They just mate, lay their eggs, and then die. Most adult moths and butterflies live for only a few days or weeks. Some insects live for one summer. Others live for years and years. The queen of a termite probably lives for the longest. Some scientist think the queen termite may live for as least fifty years.
Have you ever seen an ant carrying rocks or pebbles? A scientist once saw an ant carrying a stone. He took the ant and the stone to his laboratory and weighed them. He found the stone weighed fifty-two times more than the ant.
Other insects are stronger than the ant. A bee can carry things 300 times its's own weight. Even though , beetles are probably the strongest insect. If you had as much strength as a beetle, you could easily carry almost 10,000 pounds.
Most insects are very small. Only a few kinds of insects grow to more than one or two inches. Some insects are so tiny that they can barley be seen. But some insects are even bigger than mice. The smaller the size the better because their predators can't see them and they can escape. Since they are so small they don't need a lot of other food or water. So their small size is helpful.
Some insects can jump very, very far. A grasshopper can jump twenty times the size of it's body. If a man could do the same, he could jump 1/3 of a football field. Fleas are probably the best jumpers of all. One tiny flea can jump eight inches high and a distance of thirteen inches. If a man could do the same, he could jump over the Sears Tower.
Insects maybe very unusual, but they are very unique in many different ways.