Interesting facts about insects. Amazing insects

The class of insects is the most numerous on Earth: it has about one million species. Some of its representatives are considered the most ancient inhabitants of the planet. They inhabited it 400 million years ago. This class managed to survive and survive in the conditions of cataclysms that have happened on the Earth more than once. Thanks to the peculiarities of life, insects today are a progressive group of animals.
The information on insects, presented in the special literature, is striking in the number of unusual and little-known facts. The same sources indicate that the life of wildlife on the planet is not fully understood.

The most important classes of the class

The life of insects living on the planet is under the close attention of zoologists. For the convenience of studying animals, they were divided into detachments.

The basis for the classification was the following features:

• The nature of development is direct (without metamorphosis), indirect (with metamorphosis);
• Features of the structure of the oral apparatus - sucking, gnawing, licking, gnawing-sucking;
• The presence and structure of the wings.

In this regard, the scientists identified the following groups: cockroaches, termites, orthopterans, lice, bedbugs, equinoids, coleoptera, Lepidoptera, Hymenoptera, Diptera, fleas. Here is a far from complete list of now existing groups of insects.
Due to the high ability to adapt to the conditions of life, insects have spread throughout the planet. They live on the surface of the earth, in the soil, in fresh and salt water. Some species of insects parasitize on humans, animals, plants.
Modern scientists managed to establish that there were detachments of insects, which by now have died out. The oldest representatives of them belonged to the detachments of praatarakan, strekozopodobnyh, gerard and others.

Hymenoptera

Bright representatives of this detachment - bumblebees, bees, wasps, ants. Characterized by a full cycle of development, the presence of two pairs of mesh wings, sucking and lapping mouthpiece. These animals received another name - social insects.

Their way of life has always been interesting to man. Today, there are twenty thousand species of bees, many of which are domesticated to obtain such a valuable product as honey.
But not everyone knows that these insects have to work hard during their entire life. To make 500 grams of honey in honeycomb, one bee needs to commit 10 million flights from the hive to the flower and back. At the same time, a characteristic buzz is heard. It appears for the reason that insects cut through the air, making frequent flaps of wings. Sometimes their frequency reaches 11500 strokes per minute. But even this is not a record. Known stinging insects, which are capable of performing more than 62 thousand strokes of wings in one minute.
Man, having studied the habits of honey bees, has learned to create favorable conditions for them to receive better quality beekeeping products and in large volumes.
Wasps and bumblebees are also social insects. Their families do not live long - only one summer. Only the young womb remains for the winter, the old one dies. Together with it in the end of summer males and working insects finish their life.
Representatives of the order of the Hymenoptera are excellent pollinators.

Cockroaches

Red and black cockroaches are the main representatives of the detachment. They settle in places where a person stops caring about the cleanliness of his home. These dangerous insects can cause the spread of some infectious diseases. Cockroaches penetrate into places where human food is stored, and pollute them with waste of life.

Female cockroach is able to postpone about two million eggs per year. Of these, white little insects, similar to adults, appear. After a while they molt, acquiring the color of adults.

Lepidoptera

All kinds of butterflies belong to the detachment . Interesting facts about insects always concern the life of this group of fauna. Butterflies are diverse in color of wings and size. For example, there are insects, which are sometimes mistaken for birds - this is the wingspan of these butterflies.

Some species lead only a nocturnal life. It is known that butterflies taste food in an unusual way - hind legs. The structure of their wings has become the subject of study not just one scientific laboratory.

Orthoptera

Locusts, crickets and grasshoppers belong to the order of the Orthoptera. The insects of this group differ in the incomplete development cycle (without transformation), the presence of a gnawing oral apparatus, two pairs of special wings, which scientists call elytra.

The most dangerous insects of this detachment are locusts. The species has the capacity for mass reproduction. Gathering in huge flocks (the number can reach 50 billion individuals), locusts travel long distances. All the vegetation on the route of hordes of insects is destroyed. A flock of locusts a day eats the same amount of food that would be required for the same period by a multi-million city, for example, such as New York. Damage caused by locusts, in some cases, is irreplaceable.

Beetles

The detachment has another name - coleoptera. The characteristic representatives include a rhinoceros beetle, a May beetle, a ladybug, a ground beetle, a weevil and many others. The life of the insects of this detachment is full of mysteries, secrets and legends. About 400 thousand species of beetles are known on earth . The largest representative of the detachment - beetle-titan - reaches a length of seventeen centimeters. Also known species, the length of which is several millimeters.

In the literature, new interesting facts about insects of this group appear regularly. So, for example, a deer beetle grows up to eight centimeters in length. Its larvae develop in rotting tree stumps for five years. During this time they reach a large size - about 14 centimeters.
Many beetles are pests. They destroy the planting of cultivated plants, woodlands, food, wood, leather and other natural materials.

Interesting facts about insects

It is known that the fastest insect on Earth is the dragonfly. It is capable of moving at a speed of fifty-seven kilometers per hour.
There are countries where insect dishes are a real delicacy. Food from fried crickets and locusts is rich in proteins, carbohydrates and other useful substances.
Grasshoppers can jump a distance that is more than forty times the length of their body.
Most houseflies live in the area where they were born, but there are cases when insects move away from their native places for more than forty kilometers. It turns out that flies can not resist the force of the wind and travel along with the streams of air.
Scientists have established that on average in an area equal to a square kilometer, about 26 billion different insects live, which differ from each other in a way of life, food preferences, ways of development, life expectancy.
Modern science can not know everything about insects for the reason that there are still unknown species. But even those that are described by scientists have not yet been fully studied. The world of insects is the most mysterious and poorly studied part of living nature.
Interesting facts about insects, their knowledge teach a person to properly treat nature, understand its laws, not to harm the world around.