Things you may or may not want to know about insects

The Department of Health and Human Services have standards that regulate how many insect parts food can contain. Yes, that is correct. These standards are called, Food Detect Action Levels. The levels are based on how many fragments of insect parts per hundred grams food can contain. There goes my appetite. Wheat flour can contain 150 fragments per hundred grams, paprika can contain 300 fragments, peanut butter can contain sixty fragments, and chocolate can contain up to eight insect fragments.  On average, it is estimated that every chocolate bar contains at least three insect legs.  Since there are more than 900,000 known species of insects in the world and each year they eat 1/3 of the Earth’s food crops, I guess it’s only fitting that we also get to eat them.

I am not sure that anyone “discovered” insects, in the same way we think about discovering electricity or magnetic fields.  Way back in the ancient Greek era Plato was aware of insects. Insects are also referred to in the Bible. Linnaeus started to catalogue all the insects he could find. As for the name “insect,” it is from Latin, and the name was originally given to certain small animals, whose bodies appear cut in, or almost divided.

Bugs are certain types of insects. Some examples you might be familiar with are the boxelder bug, milkweed bug, assassin bug, and stink bug. True bugs have a stylet (a mouth shaped like a straw) that they use to suck plant juices from plants. The assassin bugs use their stylets to suck blood from other insects. The front wings of true bugs are thickened and colored near where they are attached to the insect’s body, and are clearer and thinner towards the hind end of the wing. Their hind wings are usually clear and tucked underneath the front wings.

(A cockroach can live for up to a week without its head.

The largest cockroach on record is one measured at 3.81 inches in length.  A single German Cockroach is capable of producing 20,000 offspring a year.)

A typical bed usually houses over 6 billion dust mites.

An adult bedbug can survive up to one year without feeding.

An infestation of head lice is called pediculosis.

Aphids are born pregnant without the benefit of sex. Aphids can give birth 10 days after being born themselves.

The leap of an average flea is equivalent to a 100 pound man leaping 1,000 and enduring a g-force of 20,000 pounds with an acceleration greater than that of a space shuttle.

(Only the female wasps can sting you, and not all species of wasps sting.

The world’s smallest winged insect, the Tanzanian parasitic wasp, is smaller than the eye of a housefly. A female House Fly can lay between 500 and 600 hundred eggs during her life.)

(When ants find food, they lay down a chemical trail, called a pheromone, so that other ants can find their way from the nest to the food source.

Ants are social insects and live in colonies which may have as many as 500,000 individuals. Ants do not sleep. Worker ants may live seven years and the queen may live as long as 15 years. Amazon ants (the red ants found in the western US) steal the larvae of other ants to keep as slaves. The slave ants build homes for and feed the Amazon ants, who cannot do anything but fight. They depend completely on their slaves for their survival. Scientists estimate that 30% of the animal biomass in the Amazon basin is made up of ants. Ants (and bees and wasps) use their antennae to taste their food before they eat it. Large Fire Ant colonies can contain up to 100,000 individuals.)

(When a queen bee lays the fertilized eggs that will develop into new queens, only one of the newly laid queens actually survives. The first new queen that emerges from her cell destroys all other queens in their cells and, thereafter, reigns alone. Bees not only produce the honey that humans use, they also produce beeswax which we use to polish furniture. The buzz that you hear when a bee approaches is the sound of its four wings moving at 11,400 strokes per minute. Bees fly an average of 15 miles per hour. During its lifetime, a worker bee only produces about one-twelfth of a teaspoon of honey. Honeybees are more dangerous to humans than snakes. Bees kill more people each year than all the poisonous snakes combined. Honey bees see different colours than we do. They cannot see red, but can see blue, yellow and ultraviolet. Bees eat by scooping up nectar with a wide-tipped tube or proboscis called a ‘honey spoon’.)

(You are more likely to be a target for mosquitoes if you consume bananas.

There are more than 2,500 varieties of mosquito. Organization says mosquitos cause more than 2 million deaths a year worldwide.

Mosquitoes dislike citronella because it irritates their feet. Mosquitoes prefer children to adults, and blondes to brunettes. Only female mosquitoes bite. Females need the protein from blood to produce their eggs. The animal responsible for the most human deaths world-wide is the mosquito. The disease-carrying mosquito, delivering encephalitis, the West Nile virus, malaria, and Dengue fever, is by far the deadliest beast in the animal world.  We, the Haudenosaunee have a story about the mosquito that states long ago there were giant grandfather mosquitoes. They were the size of trucks. A hunting party came upon them and because of fear, they killed them. Out from the wounds where the arrows had pierced them, came out tiny replicas of themselves (today’s mosquitoes). Because the hunters had killed these giants without a good reason other than fear, the tiny mosquitoes were released to punish humans forever.

(There are more beetles than any other animal. It is a fact that one out of every four animals is a beetle. The rhinoceros beetle is the strongest animal and is capable of lifting 850 times its own weight. There are 8 times as many beetle species as there are fish, amphibian, reptile, bird and mammal species put together.)

(A spider’s web is not a home, but rather a trap for its food. Golden Orb-Weaver Spiders build webs that are big and strong enough to catch small birds. They are as individual as snowflakes, with no two ever being the same. Some tropical spiders have built webs over eighteen feet across.  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.  The most poisonous spider is the black widow. Its venom is more potent than a rattlesnake’s, but keep in mind the black widow has to bite an adult several times to inject enough poison to do great harm. Small children and animals on the other hand, because of their low body weight, are more susceptible to the danger of the venom. No two spider webs are the same. The venom of a female black widow spider is more potent than that of a rattlesnake. Female Wolf Spiders carry their babies around on their backs until they are old enough to look after themselves.)

(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. The butterfly was originally called a “flutterby.”)

(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.)

(Aphids are born pregnant and can give birth when they are only ten days old)

(There are many, many insects that are worth money. For example, the pollination work done for free by insects would cost billions of dollars every year. Think about how much honey costs! Those bees are worth a lot of money.  Insects like the praying mantis or ladybird beetle happily take care of eating harmful insects, saving money that could be spent on pesticides. There are also silk moths that produce silk, insects that produce shellac, and some insects that are canned and eaten! Make sure you do not let the reputation of a few harmful insects prevent you from noticing all the good ones.)

(Insects have their skeletons on the outside, with their soft parts inside. That makes it hard for them to grow. Every time they want to become bigger, they have to break out of their skin and swell up to their new size before their new skin hardens. This is called molting. This means that once the insect is at its final size (adult form), it can not grow any bigger! So the butterflies and moths that you see flying around will not be any bigger tomorrow than they are today!)

(Insects eat just about anything! There are so many different insects and each one may eat something different. Many insects eat plants. Some of them eat other insects. Some of them eat blood (like the dreaded mosquitoes that bug us in warm weather). Nectar from plants is also a popular food. And many insects (like cockroaches or ants) will be happy to polish off that cookie you dropped on the ground)

(As for the fastest insect, sphinx moths, or hawk moths, have been measured flying at 53 km/h. A horsefly (Hybomitra hinei wrighti) was recently clocked at 145 km/h! More research needs to be done to determine which is the  fastest insect.)

Some more facts:

If you ever wondered which insects live the longest, here are some answers. The one thought to be longest living is the 17-year locust. However, there are some wood beetles that live as long as 40 years. here is one recorded case, beetles came out of wood that had been cut down even longer than 40 years ago and made into a bookshelf. A Tarantula can live for 30 years, and the queen termite can live 50 years.

Many insects are attracted to bright lights. The reason is not really known, but scientists think that bright lights confuse the insects’ guidance systems making them unable to fly straight.

Insects have blood, but it is not like ours. Our blood is red because it has hemoglobin.  The hemoglobin is used to carry oxygen to where it is needed in the body. Insects get their oxygen from a complex system of air tubes connected to their bodies that are called spiracles.  Insect’s blood carries nutrients, rather than oxygen, from one part to another. Like us, they do bleed when cut, and their blood clots so they can recover from minor wounds.

An entomologist, Erik J. Van Nieukerken estimates there are 1,017,018 species of insects in the world. Some are still being discovered. Several years ago I caught a spider in my house in Cold Spring, NY that was unidentifiable. It was about the size of a quarter, light brown, and one of its front legs was at least three inches long while the rest were of normal size for a spider of that size. I took photos before I released it and sent them to an entomologist who was unable to identify the species of spider. He did not think it was an anomaly either because it also did not fit any Northeast species. I wonder if it has since been identified and recorded.

A mosquito bite itches because of the chemical the mosquito injects into you. This chemical keeps your blood from clotting, so the mosquito can finish its meal. Interestingly, we humans have more of a problem with itching. Most animals, like rabbits for instance, do not get the itchy allergic reaction we humans experience.

Another bit of info on mosquitoes is the fact that Alaska, that contains 40 per cent of the nation’s surface water, is also said to contain the most intense biting mosquito season in the world. Ken Philip, an entomologist in Alaska states that if you are on Alaska’s North Slope and you do not have mosquito repellent, you could die from loss of blood in three hours.

Lastly, ladybugs are named because of their beneficial nature. Farmers in the Middle Ages felt the ladybug was sent from Heaven and so they called them Beetles of the Blessed lady. Today they are known as ladybird beetles or ladybugs.

The following are a few sayings that include insects:

The saying , “To put a bug in someone’s ear” means the person was given a reminder or a suggestion to a future event.

Putting a “Bee in your bonnet+ means putting an idea in your head. The idea buzzes around you and your bonnet (head) is a metaphor for your head.

The saying, the Bees Knees came to be because bees carry pollen back to their hives in sacs on their legs. The phrase refers to the concentrated goodness found around a bee’s knees.  Bees Knees is also said to be flapper talk. A Ms. Bee Jackson, in the 1920s, was a dancer in New York. She introduced the dance called the Bees Knees to Broadway in February 1924, when she appeared at the Silver Slipper nightclub.

The use of “Bee Line” came from the belief in the past that a bee flew straight to their hive. If you made a bee line for something, you went straight for it.

The following Web link will take you to a neat site where you can learn some interesting things about insects. There is a place to click on a link to identify insects.

http://pestcontrolcanada.com/Questions/pest_photos_601.htm