Little Known Facts About Bugs

Summer brings us green trees, lush bushes, beautiful flowers, and unfortunately, irritating bugs. Whether they walk, crawl or fly, these destructive pests can wreak havoc on a garden full of vegetables and flowers. However, what do we really know about these insects? Here are a few interesting, little known facts about the physical and behavioral traits of bugs.

-Moths can hear through their body hairs.
-Snails can sleep up to three years.
-The praying mantis is the only insect that can turn its head, and has only one ear.
-A bumblebee can beat its wings up to 160 times a second.
-If termites can hear rock music playing, they will eat through wood twice as fast.
-Approximately 80 percent of all animals on earth have six legs.
-Ants and humans are the only animals on earth that wage war against their own kind.
-Most caterpillar heads contain 248 muscles.
-Although the mayfly only lives six hours, its eggs take three years to hatch.
-Female aphids are born pregnant.
-To collect one spoonful of honey, a bee must collect pollen from 5,000 flowers.
-Garden earthworms have five pairs of hearts.
-If they cannot find food, some ribbon worms will try to eat themselves.
-Slugs have 27,000 teeth, all of which are used to eat their food.
-Slugs can stretch 11 times their length and travel a speedy .007 miles per hour.
-Almost all spiders have eight eyes.
-Not only do honeybees have hair on their bodies, they also have hairs on their eyes.
-The longest documented survival of a female bed bug, without food, is 565 days.
-Only female mosquitoes bite.
-A female emperor moth can be smelled by a male up to seven miles away.
-Fireflies are beetles, not flies.
-There are over 3,000 species of walking sticks in the world.
-Eggs of the leaf bug resemble tiny ants.
-Cockroaches are the oldest known insect on Earth.
-Dragonflies can fly forwards and backwards, and reach a speed of 30 miles per hour.
-The ears of the grasshopper are located on its front legs.
-Honeybees cannot see the color read, but can see the color blue and yellow.
-The venom of a black widow spider is more potent than a rattlesnake's.

Sources: 'The Ultimate Book of Useless Information', by Noel Botham, 'The Insect', by Url N. Lanham