1
The number of foods that cockroaches won’t eat (cucumbers).
1
The number of insects with retractable antennae (the snail).
1.8
The distance in miles the male gypsy moth can ‘smell’ the virgin female gypsy moth.
2
The number of years tarantulas can go without eating.
2
The neck of the male longnecked weevil is two times the length of its body.
2
The number of weeks ants can survive underwater.
3
The number of body parts all insects have – a head, a thorax, and an abdomen. They also have six (jointed) legs, and two antennae that they use as sensors.
The number of years for which a snail can sleep without eating.
4
The average spider will spin more than four miles of silk in a lifetime.
4
Slugs have four noses.
4
Fleas can suck blood continuously for four hours. However, their stomachs can’t hold all that blood so they excrete what they can’t hold and their offspring gobble up the leftovers.
5
The number of hearts an earthworm has.
8
Relative to its size, the ordinary house spider is eight times faster than an Olympic sprinter.
9
The number of hours it takes for an ant to walk a mile.
10
The number of times by which the world’s termites outweigh the world’s humans.
10
The percentage of the world’s food supply consumed by insects.
11
The number of brains the silkworm has (although it uses only five of them).
12
The number of eyes a caterpillar has.
12
Snails mate only once in their lifetime, but it can take up to 12 hours.
12
The number of hours it can take a spider to eat a large fly.
15
The number of minutes a cockroach can survive underwater.
17
The cicada, a fly found in Africa, spends 17 years of its life sleeping. In the two weeks it’s awake, it mates and then dies.
18
The number of hours that cockroaches carry on releasing methane gas after they die.
24
Adult earwigs can float in water for up to 24 hours.
27
The temperature in degrees Celsius to which a butterfly warms up its body before flying.
30
The ant can pull thirty times its own weight.
32
The number of brains a leech has.
The longest recorded tapeworm found in a human body was 33 metres long.
45
The total weight in grams of all the honey made by a single bee in its entire lifetime.
47
The number of teeth a mosquito has.
50
The ant can lift 50 times its own weight (it can also pull 30 times its own weight).
50
Some cockroaches are so fast they can run 50 times their own body length per second.
50
Queen termites can live for up to 50 years under the right conditions.
55
In 1864, a bootlace worm measuring 55 metres was washed up on the shore in Scotland. Even at their usual length – 30 metres – bootlace worms are incredibly long, although they’re rarely thicker than one centimetre.
61
The speed in centimetres per hour of a snail.
The number of flowers visited by a honey bee during a collection trip.
80
The percentage of creatures on Earth that have six legs.
99
The percentage of baby tarantulas killed by their own mothers.
100
The weight in grams of the heaviest insect – the goliath beetle.
150
Gram for gram, a bumblebee is 150 times stronger than an elephant.
200
The sensors on the feet of a red admiral butterfly are 200 times more sensitive to sugar than the human tongue.
200
Scorpions can withstand 200 times more nuclear radiation than humans can.
The flea can jump 350 times its body length.
572
The number of wing flaps per second made by a mosquito.
650
The number of different types of leeches (though only the Hirudo medicinalis is used for medical treatments).
750
The approximate number of legs a millipede has.
1,800
There are over 1,800 known species of flea.
2,000
The number of eggs a queen bee lays a day.
2,000
The number of muscles a caterpillar has in its body (we humans have 656).
2,500
The North American black-and-orange Monarch Butterfly is the only insect known to be capable of flying over 2,500 miles. It flies between continents in its migration.
3,000
Different types of lice.
11,400
The number of times a minute a bee flaps its wings.
Different species of butterfly.
25,000
The number of teeth a snail has.
30,000
From hatching to pupation, a caterpillar increases its body size more than 30,000 times.
30,000
The number of lenses in each of a dragonfly’s eyes.
80,000
A large swarm of locusts can eat 80,000 tons of corn in a day.
350,000
The number of known species of beetle – with millions more waiting for names.
1,000,000
There are one million ants for every person in the world.
2,000,000
Honey bees must gather nectar from two million flowers to make one pound of honey.
6,000,000
The average person has a one in six million chance of being killed by a bee sting.
8,000,000
There are up to eight million worms in the soil of each hectare of forest.
Ants evolved from wasps more than 100 million years ago.
150,000,000
The number of young a female mosquito can produce in one year.
200,000,000
For every person on Earth, there are an estimated 200 million insects.
700,000,000
Blood-sucking hookworms inhabit 700 million people worldwide.
6,000,000,000
The number of dust mites in a typical bed.
