17 Curiosities of insects that you would never imagine

The curiosities of insects. These curious facts about insects that you may not have known, but you will surely love them.

1. There are almost a million species of insects that man has identified. This means that if you tried to learn the names of one hundred species a day, it would take you over 27 years to learn the names of all known species! It is said that there are still millions of species of insects that have not been identified.
2. How to identify an insect? Not every crawling animal is an insect. If it has six legs, it is an insect, if it has more or less than six legs, it is not an insect. For example, spiders, which have four pairs of legs for walking, are not insects, they belong to the class known as arachnids.

Many insects contribute to life on Earth. For example, let’s think about ants. In an area of nearly half a hectare, the tiny insects move tons of soil each year, keeping it loose and aerating it.

4. Cockroaches and beetles feed on decaying matter and their droppings nourish the soil. Did you know?
5. Although there are insects that transmit diseases, in reality they are few, most help us: they destroy weeds or provide food for fish, birds, reptiles, mammals and other insects.
6. The march of hundreds of thousands of devastating ants is one of the most impressive spectacles in the world of insects. They can trample any object in their path, a tethered horse or a lethargic python can be reduced to mere bones in a matter of hours. Awesome! TRUE?
7. The tropical devastator ant does not build a nest like other ant species do, they march, almost constantly, in swarms that can measure 14.6 meters wide.

8. Speaking of the devastating ant, its organization is enviable. Those who are soldiers, with large heads and impressive jaws resembling scythes, form scouting teams and go ahead, leaving a trail based on a scent that they chemically process along the way.
9. Devastation ants travel more than 200 meters in the course of a day, they are only active during the day. They voraciously search for their food to feed the larvae that the ants carry with them. They do so for approximately two weeks, then they pause for the queen to lay between 100,000 and 300,000 eggs; then they continue 20 days later when hungry larvae hatch.
10. Did you know that the soldiers and workers of this immense army are blind! Yes the devastating ants are blind.
11. Those who have a phobia of cockroaches will be pleased to know that they only live one year, although I must also comment that in that year they are so fertile that they are capable of producing between 300,000 and 800,000 more cockroaches, depending on the species.
12. Springtails can live under any circumstances, no matter how extreme. With telling you that they even adapt to Antarctica. And they also live on average one year.

Mayflies. Don’t let the name fool you, they don’t live so short. Two years they have a good time, until they reach adulthood. It is then that they go away like water, only 3 hours pass and they die.

14. Bed bugs can survive hidden for 18 months without feeding.
15. While bed bugs don’t eat, woolly caterpillars hibernate for more than two years in their cocoons to transform into moths. And all for what? To die in less than a week and a half.
16. Dragonflies develop in a period of between 2 and 17 years.
17. Queen ants live on average 30 years.