Insects and Arachnids
Insects and arachnids are the most popular wild animal on Earth. Read our collection of articles discussing all sorts of ants, bugs, butterflies, spiders and just about every other type of insect and arachnid.
6 Facts About How Bees Learn, Think and Make Decisions
Do These Nightmare Parasites Hack Snail Brains to Survive?
Earth's 20 Quadrillion Ants Outweigh All Wild Birds and Mammals, Combined
What's the Biggest Spider in the World?
The Invasive Joro Spider Is Getting Cozy in the U.S.
It's a Bird, It's a Plane, It's a ... Flying Spider?
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Some cicadas are annual breeders and some show up loudly about every 17 years, but all cicadas produce a "song" that can reach 120 decibels — very close to a level that can damage human ear drums.
Work by volunteers and nonprofit organizations, such as butterfly waystations and increased education efforts, has turned around long-term population decline for some butterfly species.
Fruit flies are annoying, but we also owe them a huge debt of scientific gratitude.
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Locusts are just mild-mannered grasshoppers until they swarm up and become monstrous. In parts of the world, locust plagues are becoming a way of life.
If you've never seen a botfly, it looks rather harmless — like a basic bumblebee even. Until it lays its eggs inside a living host, and that's when things get really gross.
Dragonflies are fast, powerful and unbelievably aggressive, using a rudimentary form of 'trigonometry' to calculate distance and move in for the kill.
It's a battle of the buzzing insects. We're talking hornets vs. wasps. How do these two differ and which one has the worst sting?
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The sting of a tarantula hawk is so painful you are advised to lie on the ground as soon as you're stung to avoid falling.
Black soldier fly larvae will eat almost anything and they taste pretty good themselves, too.
Tarantulas are the largest spiders in the world and, believe it or not, some can live for up to 30 years.
Not all spiders spin webs, but the eight-legged arachnids that do, spin all kinds of different webs, some big, some small.
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These nasty pests are developing cross-resistance to multiple classes of insecticides.
Just like bees, wasps are pollinators that are also endangered. But you rarely hear anyone pleading to save wasps. A study finds out why wasps are despised by the public and researchers alike.
Ninety percent of brown recluse bites don't have any effect at all — but the mythology around these creatures and their bites is legendary.
是“香蕉蜘蛛”你看一个that sits around harmlessly catching flies, or could its bite kill a small child? If we rely solely on common names, this question is complicated.
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These nasty little bugs have been reported in 28 U.S. states and can cause an illness called Chagas disease.
这些蛛形纲动物是激进的,难以置信的快and love to murder ants for no reason, but don't worry — they're harmless.
If you think the answer is 1,000, you're way way off.
Wolf spiders might find their way into your house and can look threatening, but they're really harmless.
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The world's largest bee, lost to science for 38 years, has been rediscovered on a remote island in Indonesia.
There's an old saying that you catch more flies with honey than vinegar. Scientists have now found out why sour tastes are so repellent to flies.
There are lots of theories. Maybe fluorescence helps them find each other in the dark?
Think a teeny tiny ant can't pack a punch? Think again. The Dracula ant can subdue its prey so fast, they never know it's coming.
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Justin O. Schmidt studies insect venom and has a rating system for the relative agony inflicted by the world's most painful stings. Which is the worst?
Structures in some butterflies' wings are actually part of their ears.